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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE SOUL OF THE EAST 





The 

Soul of the East 



By 



. " 



CHARLES Gf FALL 

Author of " Patriot and Traitor," " Napoleon, 

" Lion at Bay," " Tyrolese Patriots," 

" Words with Wings," etc. 



A poem Is a flash of light 
The lightning lifts upon its wing 

To whisper in the ear of Night 
As sweetly as the wind can sing. 



OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE 

BOSTON 

1914 








r 



Copyright, iqi4 
By Charles G. Fall 



/4// rights reserved 



Printed in the United States of America 



MAR 16 1914 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 
C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A. 



CU369537 



CONTENTS 



paob 

The Taj Mahal 1 

Almost the Czar 2 

The Boy Scouts 5 

A Battle of the Giants 6 

Port Arthur's Hill op Blood 7 

When China Wakes . 8 

A Feast and Funeral . 11 

A Peerage or the Abbey 14 

A Hindu Legend 15 

A Battlefield of Nations . . . . . . 16 

A Roman Funeral . .17 

Wonderland 18 

My Pigeons .20 

The Volunteers at Janina 21 

Darjeeling 22 

Our Young King 24 

Smiles But Sad Hearts . 25 

Pandora 26 

The Towers of Silence 29 

Beneath the Southern Cross ...... 30 

A Mighty Empire 31 

The Great Moguls . . . , . . . . 33 

Portia 35 

Flirting with Tyranny , . . . . . 37 

God's Masterpiece 38 

vii 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Gardens of the Sun .40 

Byron's Villa at Ravenna 42 

The Sea-kings of Old Crete 43 

Back to the Land 45 

The Romanoff Tombs . . 46 

Raphael 47 

Self - love 48 

The Kiss of Death 49 

At Manhood's Gate 50 

A Sleep of Centuries 52 

A Den of Thieves 56 

Garden of the Unforgotten 58 

Lion's Head 59 

Good - fellowship .60 

A Tower of Victory 61 

An Unforgotten Minstrel ....... 62 

Delilah 63 

Rowena 64 

An Anthjote for Grief 65 

Immortal Longings 65 

Gates Ajar 67 

Beautiful, but not Home 68 

The Durbar 69 

Eloquence Triumphant .71 

The Immortals 72 

A Flick of Wool 73 

The Golden Pagoda 74 

The Holy Synod Militant .75 

The Golden Shell 76 

Echoes of the Revolution 77 

Fame and Victory 78 

The Last Kiss 79 

A Letter of Condolence 80 

The Struggles of Genius 80 

False Gods 81 

viii 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Trail of the Hydra 82 

A Pool of Siloam 83 

Paterfamilias 4 85 

Golden Tips ; . . 86 

Heart - photographs 87 

Caste Is God in India 88 

A Thunderbolt 90 

Veni! Vidi! Vici! 91 

Udaipur 91 

Wendell Phillips 92 

A Name that Smells .92 

Grass To-day; To-morrow Stubble .... 93 

Time Does not Cure 94 

Evangeline 94 

A Race with Death . . . . . . . .95 

The Roman Forum .96 

Red Valor 97 

Golf - sick 98 

The Puritans .99 

Pole - madness 100 

August 100 

The Bone - setter 101 

Dark Lanterns 101 

The Prize - fighters 102 

Clay Gods 103 

The Owl's Court 104 

Sun - sick 105 

Bringing the Good to God 106 

The Foot of Adam . . 107 

The Sphinx . 108 

Rome a Kaleidoscope 109 

Xanthippe 110 

Land Where All Look Sad . . . , . .111 

The Majesty of Law . . . 112 

Suffrage in California 113 



IX 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Born with Feet 114 

The Faculty of Seeing 114 

Born to a Throne . 115 

The Curate 116 

Maidenhood 117 

Jack Ketch Still Lives 118 

An Assassin 119 

Spalpeens . . . 120 

Gallantry 120 

The Dead Financier . 122 

Style is Half the Man . . . . . . 123 

Man's Fairest Grace . . . . . . . . 124 

The Te Deum 125 

Fortune - hunters 125 

Our Old Master . . 128 

A Roman 129 

A Self-made Queen 130 

A Prince's Bath 131 

Belling the Cat 131 

The Kite - flyers 132 

Nuggets Ground to Sand 133 

Forging Thunderbolts 134 

Blood 135 

The Cross in the Sky . . . . . . . 135 

Katherine 136 

Hens and Chickens 137 

A Railroad King 138 

My Babies 139 

Et Praeterea Nihil 140 

Birth 141 



THE TAJ MAHAL 

THOU Soul of the becowled and mystic East 
Which thought in symbols and so prayed ! 
Fair saint within a cloister's close ! 
Eternity's pale bride! 
At your wan nuptials Love was priest 
And wed a beauty ne'er can fade ; 
Fair Faith and Priestcraft honor-maid 
And brought the glamour of the rose, 
Aye, Art and Nature to your side. 
You are the Koh-i-noor of fanes, 
All loveliness beside yours wanes, 
No fairer lily blows. 

Night's Queen is kissing India's Queen, — 

An ecstasy of love ! — her smiles 

Imprinting on her cheeks a sheen 

A bridegroom's amorous wiles 

Will press upon his pride ; 

Or Cupid, Psyche by his side. 

'Twas twenty thousand and in twenty years 

Could wake to life this parthenon of art ; 

And for no swain whose eyes were fonts of 

tears ; 
'Twas Shah Jahan here shrined his Mumtaz' 

heart! 

1 



ALMOST THE CZAR 



ALMOST THE CZAR 

YON pin-pricks in the charted skies 
That flicker like great fireflies 
But are great constellations' eyes 
Exalt our souls to awe; 
How wondrous is that magic law 
Can draw with its magnetic hand 
Each planet to its sister sphere — 
Erail phantoms ruled by wizard wand ! — 
And yet they through the air career, 
Outrun, outweigh our whirling land 
As mountains outweigh sand. 

The love of nature is a daily feast : — 

To see Aurora bathe in Bengal Bay ; 

Victoria churn into a seething yeast 

A continent of tideless seas ; 

On Caucasus to watch the birth of Day ; 

On Gornergrat to feel that arctic breeze — 

The child of Alpine glaciers — freeze your cheek 

These awful grandeurs make frail man so meek ! 

Behold Yosemite's Tartarean pit! 
The Geysers hurl aloft their boiling spumes ! 

2 



ALMOST THE CZAR 



Then southward turn your feet; with JSTight 

come sit 
Where down the canyon Colorado fumes ! 
Upon the Andes take the Morning's hand 
And let it lead your eyes from peak to peak ! 
Then on Darjeeling's battlements come stand 
And meet great Kinchinjunga face to face ! 
You seem with Mother Nature's self to speak; 
Then man — a fly-speck ! — seems a part of space. 

'Tis nectar to a godlike soul ! 
That man whose mind does not expand 
As glen and glacier, lake and land 
Before its opening eyes unroll, 
And promontories, peaks unfold 
Till Earth commingles with the sky 
And God on chariot wheels rolls by, 
Is not of hero's mould. 

Almost the Czar ! A few more feet 

And Kinchinjunga — but a name 

Our knees with mild obeisance greet — 

Had worn the coronet of fame 

And been Creation's Sovereign-Lord, 

And not the squire who bears the sword ; 

Princes and Wise Men from the East 
Had brought frankincense and fine gold 
And spread them at an Emperor's feast ; 
And shepherds, too, had left the fold 

3 



ALMOST THE CZAR 



To kneel before his gorgeous throne 
And count his praise their monarch's own; 
While near him and within his frown 
Stood babies bigger than Mont Blanc; 
And, like some fathers, he looked down 
On children ranged in rank. 

This morn while mooning in an idler's bed 

Eair courtiers toil with blistered feet 

To place a wreath upon the true Czar's head 

And with obeisance this world's sovereign greet 

And kiss the hand of Everest 

While his proud vassals round him prest. 

But I, Great Vassal, am content 
Within your court to bend the knee; 
Your earldom seems a continent 
Where man can wander fancy-free. 

Big brother of the Andes and the Alps ! 
As now your worshipper before you stands 
And sees the clouds unveil your grisly scalps, 
The Sun-God lay upon your head His hands ; 
And down yon canyon the fierce torrent hears 
That southward, seaward bears the glaciers' tears ; 
The volleying thunder rumble down the glen 
When some black avalanche engulfs a fen, 
Ah ! hears the Storm-King rage, the forests sigh, 
His heart calls proudly : There's a God on high. 



THE BOY SCOUTS 



THE BOY SCOUTS 

WHY rob the cradle for the Gorgon's feast ? 
Are there not men enough who love their 
home ? 
Shall Abram slay his son like some wild beast 
Whose dripping jaws across the jungle roam % 

Why feed such panting hearts on human blood ? 
Our cosset lambs should learn to love the milk 
Of kindness, learn those arts can dam the flood 
Of sin black Moloch vomits and his ilk. 

We are not Turks ! this is no Pagan Age ! 
If we have grabbed more than our hands can keep. 
Surrender some ! come, let no glutton's rage 
Bind Innocence upon the Minotaur to sleep ! 

Our pilferings, some, are not worth their cost; 
Why turn our hearths to shambles in defending ? 
'Twere better if some battles had been lost 
And better if some enmities were ending ! 

Does gratitude come home on every breeze 
Which blows from Indian wastes and coral zones ? 

5 



A BATTLE OF THE GIANTS 

Or drop like autumn apples from the trees 
Where many a red-cheeked boy has laid his bones 

Shall merry England be a lion's lair 
And gleam with bayonets and whetted teeth ? 
And shall the war-winged bugle rend the air ? 
And shall the sword be never in its sheath ? 

And all for this ? A few more roods of earth ? 
A few more black men ? few more ships to man ? 
A few more hearts that hate us from their birth ? 
A dagger at our throats each mile we span ? 



A BATTLE OF THE GIANTS 

SEVEN hundred thousand men! two thousand 
guns 
Shouting defiance in each other's ears ! 
Oceans of smoke that freight the air by tons ! 
What volleying musketry the Sunrise hears ! 

And when the dead are piled like swaths of grain 
And Thraldom's myrmidons are Murder's food, 
A stillness like primeval solitude 
Or surges silenced by a pelting rain 

Drenches the field. Tramping for days, the ranks 
Of Nogi's men fall on the Kussian flanks 

6 



PORT ARTHUR'S HILL OF BLOOD 

Like cyclones bidden to a Cyclops' feast 
Or hungry hounds that chase a bated beast; 

A crunch ! a groan ! a rush of spouting blood ! 
A silence like the maelstrom at its flood ! 



PORT ARTHUR'S HILL OF BLOOD 

jnnWAS here men fell as gouts of rain will pelt 
J- A panting field ; into death's maw they fell 
As wheat will choke a mill ! they died and felt 
No pang ! here on this hill the fumes of Hell 

Burnt men to crisps as Desolation's flame 
With cyclones blisters Afric's panting plain; 
No time for prayer ! too deadly is death's aim ; 
Nor thought of home ! too soon their pulses wane ; 

Yet of that twenty thousand all saw day 
In homes where mothers loved them as their life ; 
O God ! that some one, sweetheart, sister, wife, 
Had closed these eyes and drunk their dying ray ! 

Do they not somewhere wait the rising Sun ? 
Can they not somewhere hear sweet Freedom's gun ? 
Take off your shoes ! on heroes' graves you tread ! 
This is an altar ; kneel and bare your head ! 

7 



WHEN CHINA WAKES 



WHEN CHINA WAKES 

WHEN China wakes 
And lif e's elixir takes, 
And cuts her hair, 
And puts on science's shoes, 
And knows that in republics men can choose ; 
And learns self-rule and Freedom's ritual 
That all are sovereigns, one law governs all; 
Can marshal soldiers like that endless horde 
That Xerxes led across the Golden Ford, 
Beware ! Beware ! 

The Manchu is no more ; 

'Tis Liberty sits on the Dragon Throne, 

'Tis her loud pseans ring from hill to shore 

And by each brook and breeze are preached ; 

The Great Wall has been breached ; 

That mountain nymph has found her own. 

Welcome, Bloody-Fingered Morn ! 
'Tis Night you slew when your red horn 
Boweled his sleeping sides, and Freedom's gleam 
Shattered his shield with Light's celestial beam. 

8 



WHEN CHINA WAKES 



For forty centuries she grew 

And multiplied by Nature's law, 

Not conquest ; and if dynasties were true 

The face of Plenty 'twas she saw ; 

If false, she shed them as a snake his skin 

And sought by other kings Prosperity to win ; 

'Twas Buddha and Confucius were her law, 

Their creeds the shibboleths she knew; 

'Tis armies breed big armies ; they are hostages 

To Fortune, feeders of mad jealousies! 

Great nations live by virtues ; and these sons 

Of Liberty, new born, are virtuous ; 

Their stream of life still runs 

Through banks are sedge-grown, tortuous, 

Like her great river, Asia's Amazon, 

But bears within its breast a benizon : 

To be unfilial, be unbrotherly, 

Disloyal or untrue, to feel no shame 

For sin, and love not honesty and truth, 

Are crimes to-day as in great Huanti's times ; 

Aye, for all ages have been crimes. 

Since Kubla Khan led on her centuries 
She hugged the heart of Peace; no need 
Of conquest and that curse of nations, greed ; 
When we fed swine her sons were Mercuries 
Of Liberty's democracies ; 

9 



WHEN CHINA WAKES 



How blest the land where Moloch is despised 
And arts that civilize are prized ! 

Four hundred millions ! no, not dead, alert : 

Alive to trade and thirsting for the stream 

Will turn its mill; what can avert 

These eager eyes and their electric beam ? 

And will they love their own ? and will they fight 

For wife, for kindred and the homes they made ? 

These men are monarchs now ; this light 

That feeds their eyes will never fade ! 

Upon a few frail backs now rests a load 
That none has borne since Hercules 
For Atlas bore aloft this world ; 
Do ye love country more than self ? 
And Freedom's triumph more than pelf? 
Then gird their loins and stay their hands ! 

For let them fail, an empire falls, — 

Our quadruple ! — and Thraldom shouts, 

Hyenas laugh, kings lick their chops, 

The hand upon the clock of Time 

Grows gray with mildew's rime. 

The double-headed vulture is now poised 

In air ; compelled to vomit up one prey, 

He craves its brother ; and has grown so huge 

By swallowing manikins and washing down 

His gluttony with blood of his own sons. 

10 



A FEAST AND FUNERAL 



Blood! Blood! Half Tartar and half cannibal, 
He must have men to eat and blood to drink. 

But ye who seek her treasure, 
Be sure ye take her measure. 



A FEAST AM) FUKERAL 

AT Tusculum when April glows 
The daffodil, narcissus blows ; 
The woods are bowers of fresh perfumes ! 
Then crocus' tender feet begin ' 
To crawl from graves the Sun exhumes; 
And every bird and floweret knows 
The winter wind has shed his skin. 

On such a day — it was the day 

That April kist the hem of May — 

I took a friend who loved to stray 

And sing, betimes, a woodland lay ; 

That friend ? — he was my inner self ! — 

And many a shady, sunny walk 

And many a merry, cheery talk 

My heart has had with that dumb sylph. 

And all the way across the hill 
That sylph and I could drink our fill 

11 



A FEAST AND FUNERAL 



Of dews and fragrance, shade and sun ; 
And we could walk or we could run 
Or sit and muse beside a rill 
With none to ask the reason why ; 
Could watch the lark climb up the sky 
And from his airy aerie cry 
A truce to trouble, want and woe 
And all the goblin herd below. 

Who think you 'twas we met that day 
While gamboling along our way? 
Perhaps it was some woodland f aye ? 
True! Tityrus, my school-day friend 
Whom Virgil brought to shake my hand ! 
Yes, he was sitting by a brook 
And had his cloak and shepherd's crook, 
And had a score or more of sheep ; 
And some were feeding, some asleep, — 
All children of that happy band 
That Virgil saw in this same land ; — 
And Tityrus had brought his flute 
That had for fifty years been mute, 

At Tusculum, where Tully had his home, — 
As sweet a singer as e'er sung of Rome ! — ■ 
And where that glorious galaxy of men 
Assembled to discuss the scope and ken 
Of eloquence, a score of red-cheeked boys, 
Young patriots and Italy's fond hope, 
Were waving flags and shouting out a song; 

12 



A FEAST AND FUNERAL 



An old man watched them as they romped along 
And with a glistening eye bepraised their joys ; 
Though seeming in the mildewed past to grope. 

He saw me, saw my wistful eye ; 

" When I, too, was a beardless elf 

I had no country and no patriot shrine; 

~No mother's heart could hear my plaintive cry ; 

This land was Plunder's den, 'twas Greed and 

Pelf 
Were King and Queen; yes, 'twas the Church's 

mine; 
Its jails were shambles for her sons ; these ways, 
So fair, ran blood at times — and all for naught. 
But now, ah, now no longer prays 
For Aphrodite's kiss upon her lips ! 
I had two brothers who her freedom bought 
With life, oh, could they see what my eyes see ! 
See Italy a matron, strong and free. 
A matron ? nay, a goddess with a sword 
And shield, who calls no tyrant lord; 
But all sing songs of sweet accord ! " 

My heart re-echoed that glad cry; 
I fear a tear stood in my eye. 



13 



A PEERAGE OR THE ABBEY 



A PEERAGE OR THE ABBEY 

NOW for a peerage or the Abbey! said 
Great Nelson as the battle was begun ; 
A title or a halo for his head 
Is the mirage allures so many a son. 

A gewgaw, maybe, and a tinsel crown 
The country lays upon a faithful hind ; 
But we are human and we cannot frown 
On this infirmity of all mankind. 

They died for others, they who took the pass, 
And Lacedasmon wore a tinsel crown ; 
And on the field of Waterloo the grass 
Is tinsel, but no scythe can cut it down ; 

And Britain sends her great proconsuls out 
To victories of sword and tongue and pen ; 
Where is the scorpion who dares to flout ? 
Come, Cobra, show us where to match these men ! 

A frailty of the mind ! a lover's sigh ! 
But heroes' hearts are only Manhood's child ; 
See Nelson put the glass to Fear's blind eye 
And save a nation from a woodman's wild! 

14 



A HINDU LEGEND 



A HINDU LEGEND 

I LIKE that Hindu legend says the stars 
Are dead men's souls and shine through Time's 
long night; 
And says the good God made us never bars 
His loving children from the realms of light ; 

And says the stars of magnitude are souls 
Who loved their fellows best while here on earth ; 
And says there is no hamlet here but holds 
Sons of eternal love, immortal birth ; 

And that there is infinity of space 
Eor all, both great and small, who love the right ; 
And those who ran but fainted in the race 
Are stars who veil their faces from our sight. 



15 



A BATTLEFIELD OF NATIONS 



A BATTLEFIELD OF NATIONS 

HERE Britain stood and battled for a realm; 
She won, else that grim hand that held the helm 
Had tost an empire to the kites and crows ; 

Ye Fates, who weigh the nations in your scales ! 
'Tis here your beam was poised, yes, dropt and rose 
Till blood, the blood of saints alone avails. 

Your balances here blinked like fireflies 
When Night has strangled Day and not a star 
Nor ray of hope could guide the captain's eyes; 
But God then spoke ! the great ship crossed the bar. 

Fair Delhi's plains for ages were dead fields, 
Were deserts, paved with bones ; a hundred fights 
Have built these barriers we see for shields ; 
What giant sepulchers enthrall our sights ! 
As many cities peopled once these plains 
As Troy could boast ; but kindly Indian suns 
With verdure robe them, healing Ruin's pains; 
Ah ! with what speed the foot of Nature runs ! 

And guarding these sad shrines is Minar's Kutab, 
A tower of Victory outshines Vendome; 
A fairy necromance of good Queen Mab 
Which dwarfs in grandeur those tall shafts of Rome. 

16 



A ROMAN FUNERAL 



A ROMAN FUNERAL 

A ROMAN funeral ; and smother me with flowers ! 
And come and walk with me unto my lonely 
grave ; 
Where Pan will weave of evergreens his shepherd 

bowers 
And where my soul can hear Old Ocean's pealing wave. 

My pillow, may it be some silent, sun-kist hill 
Where fauns and fairies gambol day and night; 
A font near by where nightingales can drink their fill ; 
A cross to tell life's tale ; a pine of friendly height ; 

And come, My Love, sometimes, — 'tis here your chil- 
dren lie, — 
And bring us roses, sit and hold our spirit hands 
As in the days when soul lit up the sightless eye; 
Forget us not ! for in whatever alien lands 

We roam, be sure that fond Expectancy will wait 
Your coming as the bridegroom waits his long-loved 

bride, 
And as your children, when sweet Cynthia came late, 
At eventide sat watching by the fire's side. 



17 



WONDERLAND 



WONDERLAND 

UPON some autumn night, 
After a week of storms, 
When the empyrean is a crystal sea 
Sparkling with phosphorescent light, 
Have you, when wandering through some colonnade 
Of monarchs canopied with constellations, 
Ne'er wondered why those worlds were made? 

Are they the fancies of a Titan brain, 
His shuttlecock and whirling top ? 
Those globes that stagger comprehension 
With a dome quadrillion miles across, 
Are they Jehovah's play and sport ? 
Are Sirius — that hundred suns ! — 
Millions of gems star-gazers see 
For naught except to dazzle our rapt eyes 
And feast a Godhead's whim? 

This earth ten thousand centuries have made 

So sages say ; how many since our age ? 

Since Man crawled on the ground? we swam the 

sea? 
Were urchins clinging to Old Ocean's flanks ? 
What aeons since we men were mollusks ? 

18 



WONDERLAND 



But if those stars for some design exist, 
Will ne'er the glaze be lifted from our eyes ? 
What! must we grope like sightless snails 
Across Atlantic's dungeon floor ? 

Why should not Man progress? Why stop 

Ere telescopic eyes and ears 

And senses, quickened, magnified, 

Have made red Mars a neighbor's hearth ? 

Why should we not outgrow these limitations — 
How wondrous is our march since we were 

prawns ! — 
And learn the planets' use and talk with moons 

and stars? 

Have we not chained the continents 
And learned to walk the sea and air 
Were once such fathomless enigmas ? 

Hyperion, come ! great sire of earth and sun ! 
Come, Eather, wash the scales from our blind eyes 
And shoe our feet with wings that we may run 
Beside Apollo's chariot through the skies! 
Teach us the song the spheres have learned to chant ! 
Our spirit footsteps on the zodiac plant! 



19 



MY PIGEONS 



MY PIGEONS 

I COUNTED thirty-five just now 
Careering through the tideless sea; 
They are all homers, and their home 
Is dear to them as mine to me; 

And no lead messenger e'er shrieks 
Their requiem ; 'tis Nature speaks 
And bids them with the whirlwinds roam 
From Lion's Head to Plymouth's foam. 

I love to hear their whirring wings, 
Glinting like Dawn upon the waves; 
'Tis Ereedom in their cycles sings, 
'Tis Ereedom's breath their plumage laves! 

Can ye be spirits from that other world ? 
The souls of saints have died in other days 
Whose pinions that grim dragon, Death, has 

furled ? 
Ye have such soulful eyes and girlish ways ! 

And if ye are, oh, tell me ! tell me true — 
Where dwell the souls of the enhaloed dead ? 
Are they, like you, careering through the blue ? 
And they, too, on ambrosial ether fed ? 

20 



THE VOLUNTEERS AT JANINA 

Then go and whisper in Alcestis' ear 
And bid him come to me, come in my dreams 
And kiss me once again and let me hear 
That voice that like St. John's so often seems ! 

Go find him ! find him wheresoever he be ! — 
No sweeter seraph roams the soulful skies ! — 
And ask him does he still remember me, 
And tell him how I long to feast mine eyes ! 



THE VOLUNTEERS AT JANINA 

CHARGE! charge, ye Greeks ! To Hell with 
fear ! 
'Tis love, dear love, has brought you here: 
Ye are not conscripts, volunteers ! 
And Glory's pssan thrills your ears ! 

And ye know well Thermopylae, 
For there your fathers would be free, 
And oft have trod Olympia, 
E'er hungering for America : 

Hungered ye have for many an age 
And gnashed your teeth with freemen's rage; 

21 



DARJEELING 



Ye now are on Epirus' heights, 
Be steady, lads ; home is in sight. 

Eorget, no, never! heroes' eyes 

Look down from aeries in the skies, 

And scimitars five hundred years 

Have drunk your blood and scorned your tears; 

Kow wipe them from your mother's cheek ! 

Let bayonets and shrapnel speak ! 

Eear not yon serpent sons of Cain ! 
Who was it raped Athena's maid, 
Your Parthenon — and all for gain ! — - 
Your dead in Ceramicus laid % 

Who drove from Salamis Aegea's fleet 
And bade you kiss the Bastard's feet % 
Charge, sons of Sparta ! charge, brave Greeks ! 
Wipe out the curse ! 'Tis Freedom speaks I 



DARJEELIKG 

UPON Darjeeling's frowning front, — 
Her eyes embrace a continent 
Of crags and peaks have borne the brunt 
Of storms eternity has sent ! — 
22 



DARJEELING 



And near our porch there stands a tree 
Which is the nightly resting-place 
Of kites whose hearts are fancy-free 
But love this monarch's wrinkled face. 

To see them course across the sky 
And hither wend their eager wings 
As tired children homeward fly 
As soon as twilight's cricket sings ! 

No matter who, no matter when, 
This giant welcomes to his breast 
Whoever comes from scarp or fen, 
Malaku or from Everest. 

Some years ago I toiled all day 
To climb the pass of St. Bernard, 
At dusk I braved the watch-dog's bay 
And my lame legs begged watch and ward ; 

'Twas mine ! for never traveler 
Has pulled in vain that leathern latch ; 
The waif and wreck and wanderer 
From Gorgon jaws they often snatch. 

And so when our short day shall end 
And skies shall don their crimson hue, 
Whatever fortune Eate may send, 
May we find rest within the blue ! 

23 



OUR YOUNG KING 



O Thou can hear the raven cry, 
Give us a Charity can fly, 
A heart can weep when women sigh, 
A penny for a wistful eye ! 



OUR YOUNG KING 

WHEN our young King was on his 
throne 
No green of envy stained my face ; 
Ere long our King would have his own, 
And we were tired of life's race. 

But now, ah ! now, I scarce can see 
A rabbit cuddling up his child, 
A squirrel climbing up a tree 
To feed his young within our wild, 

But my wan face grows livid green 
And Envy's tooth consumes my soul 
That I cannot my plumage preen 
And sip the nectar from their bowl. 



24 



SMILES BUT SAD HEARTS 



SMILES BUT SAD HEARTS 

THERE was an actor once — 
A sad and tempest-smitten man ! — 
Who worshipped for the nonce 
At Thalia's shrine, and sought to fan 
The woes away that gnawed his heart 
By laughter bred of Thespian art; 

But still he pined beneath his grief, 

And called the leech to his lone bed 

And told his agonies in brief 

To learn if naught could lift his head 

From Melancholy's slough 

And wipe the care-stains from his brow. 

The leech could give no remedy 
Save to divert the mind, 
Bade him to Thalia's shrine proceed 
And on this actor's smiles to feed ; 
His quips and quirks go see ! 
Alas, he said, but I am he. 



25 



PANDORA 



PANDORA 

A COUNCIL in Elysium of sages 
That know the frets and flatteries of Fortune 
And hear their plaudits echoed by the Ages ! 
Their theme, the fairest fate that falls to Man. 

Minos — he built a prehistoric state — 
Vied with the Forum's King in praise of Sover- 
eignty : — 
To mould a nation, forge its laws and bend 
Untutored millions to your tutored will; 
To silence Envy, stay Reaction's tide, 
'Twixt Mammon and mad Moloch steer the state 
And read your recompense in loving eyes — - 
This is the best Pandora's box supplies — 
But always with a dagger crying, Hold ! 

But Pericles and Gorgias declared 
A tongue of gold is Fortunatus' gift : — 
For he who stands upon the Pnyx and speaks 
The burning words will kindle conflagrations 
And be a lesson to all After-Time, 
A trumpet to re-echo round the globe 
And lift the bondman to the freeman's perch — 
He folds against his breast Pandora's head — 
Though always Hate and Envy shake his bed. 

26 



PANDORA 



But Midas — golden-fingered ! — thought that art 
Can turn whate'er it touch to gold ; 
Build monarch-palaces; buy provinces; 
Drag millions captive at his chariot wheels ; 
Can gild the victor's sword or hold in leash 
The wolves of war ; bid princes, potentates 
Come bathe his feet with tears ; can fill 
The mouths of hungry generations ; tie 
The feet of Conquest — he is Fortune's favorite — 
Though Wealth has wings and harpies 'round him 
flit. 

'Not so ! the Conquerors said, young Macedon 

And he who held Olympian Borne 

Captive at Capua a score of years : — 

Come see me stride across a prostrate world 

To where proud Indus pours her tawny floods! 

See Greece and Egypt, Persia, India 

My sandal-bearers, and their princesses, 

Darius' daughters and the Pharaohs' pride, 

My cup-bearers ! tiaras, jewels 

Pour in my lap from cornucopias 

Those petty Khans for centuries were filling! 

Where can Pandora match this fame? 

My banquet-hall outstares old Karnac's feasts — 

But Envy, Treason, haunt me like wild beasts. 

Homer and Virgil lift aloft their flag, 
A crimson banner in a wintry sky ! — 

27 



PANDORA 



And tell of Orpheus and Eurydice 

And the seraphic voice of Poesy : — 

All people since the Sun 

Have sat in wonder at her feet 

And drunk her battle-hymns, her tales 

Of arms — forgotten save the Muses sang ! — 

But now she wanders barefoot through the land. 

My oaten pipe finds none will shake its hand, 

For Midas' brother now is charioteer, 

And Croesus rides beside to help him steer. 

'Twas Motherhood now spoke : — 

Cornelia rose, — and with her rose the Gracchi, — 

The Scipios' daughter, in whose channels coursed 

The bluest blood since Day was born of Time. 

So softly did she speak all craned their ears 

To catch each drop her soul distilled. 

One sentence ! that was all ! These are my jewels ! - 

But Minos and the Conquerors bowed their heads 

To think the assassin's dagger drank their blood. 

Lo, Plato stands while Aristotle speaks : — 
Philosophy has not such gems as Love; 
Nor has she such a clarion voice as War ; 
Nor are her sandals gold ; nor does her tongue 
Distill the wine of Helicon ; 
Her face is ashen from her midnight toil ; 
Her vestments, too, are but the palmer's garb; 
Pale Charity and Temperance, her sons. 

28 



THE TOWERS OF SILENCE 



But Leisure is her hand-maid, and her eyes 
Are on the rolling spheres and Man's true worth ; 
All Knowledge is her realm; the Good and Great 
Of Past and Present are her boon-companions. 
A golden leisure, zeal all Art to scan, 
This is the fairest gift that falls to Man. 



THE TOWERS OF SILENCE 

AS beautiful as Dawn 
When gliding o'er Abuta's height 
Upon auroral wings of light! 
As gentle, too, as any fawn; 
As graceful as a bird in flight; 
A jewel of delight ! 

And as I watched her airy tread — 
She scarcely walked, nor did she run — 
I wondered if she touched the sod; 
A fire-worshipper, she said, 
A Parsee, and the Sovereign Sun, 
The Lord of Fire, was her God. 

• ••••••• 

A week has fled ; and now I stand 
Beside the Silent Towers of Death ; 
And vultures now are hovering round; 
And something says that Dastard Hand 

29 



BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS 



Has choked this fairy spirit's breath 
And dragged her to this burial ground ; 

And that these devils now I see 

Have torn her heart out, stripped her flesh, 

And plucked and picked this vestal's bones 

And left her like a stricken tree — 

So Moslems raped fair Judah's mesh ! — 

And stark she lies upon these stones. 



BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS 

THE moon is dancing upon Bengal Bay, 
Her silver footprints dimpling every wave ; 
We sit and watch the flying fishes play 
And dolphins leaping from the grave. 

On such a night did Cynthia unveil 

Her chastity before the staring stars, 

And nymphs, at play within the startled dale, 

Thought Venus was awaiting Mars. 

Ye children of the Northern Star, rejoice ; 
Aye, pity those who swelter 'neath the Cross, — 
Misfortune's vassals ! — for they had no choice 
But on the burning zone must toss. 

30 



A MIGHTY EMPIRE 



See China's millions frying in the sun, 
Herded like ants along the equator's lee! 
Did e'er an Aztec such a gauntlet run, 
Or break his back for such a fee ? 

And see the Hindu reach to pluck a thorn 
From out the hedgerows of a parching plain 
And kiss with blistered lips the cheek of Dawn, 
And count it joy to bear the pain ! 

And Egypt see, make bricks, but with no straw, 
A pittance beg of Father Nilus' flood, 
And weigh her toil by Hunger's cruel law : — 
A grain of wheat, a drop of blood ! 

Oh, ye were born beneath a halcyon sky 
And live where Alpine tramontanas blow, 
Sing paeans as ye lift your heads so high ! 
Ye reap the seed ye did not sow. 



A MIGHTY EMPIEE 

CYCLOPEAN" empire ! Crumbling? ISTo! 
But needs to be cemented, needs the bands 
Of love drawn tighter and the hands 
Across the sea clasped closer and the flow 

31 



A MIGHTY EMPIRE 



Of loyalty confined in clearer channels. Think, 
A quarter of the world ! The Night forgets 
'Tis dark while lingering upon the brink 
Of Earth to hear the drum-beats of the Morn ; 
And as the Hours in their great circle set, 
Their ears can hear the Briton's bugle horn. 

She needs a parliament of sovereign states 
And loving children bringing Wisdom's might; 
Needs battle-ships whose hearts are big with fates, 
And banners borne by yeomen for the right : 
Give her a standard with a dozen stars — 
One chief, and not a galaxy of suns — 
And see a glory light the field of Mars 
And hear her thunders silence Envy's guns ! 

Her party-venom makes the heart stand still. 
Ye Gods ! A man who nobly loves his land 
Should have Goliath's heart, Goliath's will, 
A patience scorns the Euries' smiting hand 
When devils, whelped in hell, are at his throat ; 
And he must bear his back to scorpions 
And smile and smile though Armageddon smote 
And dervishes were priming Discord's guns. 



32 



THE GREAT MOGULS 



THE GREAT MOGULS 

YE Great Moguls, 
Rare quinvirate of Kings ! 
Great scions of old Genghis Khan, — 
Who stretched his arm from Moscow to Pekin, — 
And Kubla Khan, — half Asia's overlord, — 
And Tamerlane, — the Giaour's mastodon ! 
Your swords are sheathed in Silence's wand 
And scarce one scar across Earth's face 
Recounts your hecatombs of slain. 

No ! Legend is your chronicler ; 
The Genii 'tis who tell the tale 
Of your campaigns, your tournaments with Na- 
ture; 
You had no Xenophon; 

That Eagle's quill that told the rape of Gaul 
Your clownish fingers could not clutch. 

And yet you fashioned miracles of art, 
And Koh-i-noors and parthenons 
Whose glories pale the fires of Grecian shrines, 
Aye, make our Gothic temples stand at arms 
And Italy's immortals doff their cowls ; — 

33 



THE GREAT MOGULS 



These are your chroniclers, 

The books untutored eyes can read. 

How fleeting are the scars the sword can hew ! 
Kind Nature quickly heals the cuts ; 
How flitting is the gleam of blood 
That trickles from a nation's wounds ! 
Art, too, can scorn the blows of Time; — 
But not forever, for all things must fade. 

Behold great Cheops ; count his scars ! 
The Parthenon ! 'twas Man, not Time 
Who did to death Athena's saint; 
The Pantheon still lifts her regal head ; 
The Coliseum, who dismantled this % 
'Twas Vandals, not the hammer of Old Age ; 
Though Pome is now a sick man's dream 
This Child of the Eternal Hills still lives. 

'Tis Earthquake is the temple's terror, 
But not the dainty fingers of the Frost, 
The Rain, the Sunshine or the Air. 



34 



PORTIA 



PORTIA 

rS Liberty a love-sick maid? 
-■- A plaything of the wanton wind ? 
A will-o'-wisp and seldom staid, 
A phantom seldom of one mind % 
And is a country truly kind 
To her sweet self who leaves her fate 
To some fair-faced, unthinking hind, 
With instincts good but seldom great ? 

Is government a brownie's game ? 
A fantasy of Fashion's taste ? 
Is sovereignty an echoing name ? 
A Caesar's scepter, pith and paste ? 
And should a nation's sword and might 
Be harnessed to a dreamer's sight 
And ne'er with Barbarossa fight 
Kor die for Freedom and the Right ? 

What ! shall some bloodless, Cyprian maid, 
Who of her shadow is afraid, 
Gird on an Atlantean mail, 
And in the shadow of the sail 

35 



PORTIA 

Sit dumb while thunders shake the lands ? 
Or hold her breath and fold her hands 
While Trafalgars assail the skies 
That she invoked with cringing cries ? 

Great States are born and bred by war ! 
They draw deep breaths when battle-fleets 
Are sailing towards some Northern Star 
And whirlwinds fill the bellying sheets. 
Who feeds their guns ? Not sexless sons ! 
'Tis men man fleets, not Amazons ! 
Shall Egypt Anthony lead on, 
To fly before the fight is won ? 

And shall Olympian-bred men, — 
Half -gods upon some S ami an field, 
Half -gods as well with tongue and pen ! — 
Bear back Aspasia on her shield ? 
And shall Pharsalias lift their heads, 
Shall Hector hurl the bolts of Jove 
While his frail wife spins silken threads 
Of which his tunic will be wove ? 

To be a mother is the prize God meant 
For girls, and string the great Achilles' bow 
That shafts through burnished bronze, seven- 
plated, sent; 
To fail in bending it brings Woman low 
Upon a. plain beside her beardless boy ! 
She is man's help-mate ; vassal ? no ! nor toy ! 

36 



FLIRTING WITH TYRANNY 



God did not give her mankind's mind nor 

might ; 
To be the Gracchi's mother is her right. 



O Father, to our wives give noble sons ! 
And give a lover, Father, to each maid ! 
Then Idleness for wraiths no longer runs, 
The horrid ghost of Vassalage is laid. 



FLIRTING WITH TYRANNY 

THE Lion, frightened by the Eagle's beak, 
Besought the friendship of the Northern 
Bear; 
A Tartar ! Cossack ! Ruthless ! mad to seek 
A sceptered sway as boundless as the air ; 

Land-hungry with a hunger eats itself; 

An enemy by instinct of mankind; 

Corrupt by custom ; gorged with spoils and pelf ; 

To Freedom's civilizing longings blind! 

The Lion, too, was stuffed with carcases; 
Replete with ravagings, he preyed on Peace — 
But to his vassals had brought argosies 
Were priceless clippings of his golden fleece. 

37 



GOD'S MASTERPIECE 



'Tis sweet to see the Lion and the Bear 
Lie snug together in such fond embrace ! 
But even lions ought to have a care 
Lest boas and pythons get too near their face ; 

For Bruin's hug is like an iron vice ; 
His love is eager — will it ever tire ? — 
Will like the horse-leech promise any price 
If you will pull his chestnuts from the fire ; 

He whets his teeth to-day for China's pelt 
And gloats to glut again his mammoth maw : 
Remorse has e'er this corsair's conscience felt ? 
Has e'er a savage failed to scorn all law \ 

It is by hugging that he slays his foes, 
And like constrictors he eats victims whole: 
Your light is Liberty's, and your heart knows 
To flirt with tyrannies corrupts the soul. 



GOD'S MASTERPIECE 

GOD'S masterpiece! A boy, 
Instinct with reason, ruled by heart, 
Great Nature's son, with Art's alloy, 
And days to sell in Duty's mart! 

38 



GOD'S MASTERPIECE 



We stare at the Himalayas; Aetna's flame 
Awakens wonder in our dazzled eyes; 
The might of Elbruz, climbing up the skies 
And dazing us with his Titanic size, 
Bespeaks a majesty outstares his fame. 

We see the Volga pour a tawny flood 

Could cover France three times with watery graves, 

Yet fade to air by some mysterious law ; 

We know that sometimes in a drop of blood 

A Caesar sleeps and many a hundred braves, 

]STo eye can see, wage Amazonian war. 

And yet that red-cheeked rose we see, 
That boy you dandle on your knee, 
Surpasses all in majesty. 

He has a hidden magic's might 
More subtle than a flash of light; 
'Twill soon awake from its long dream 
And burn up worlds with its fierce gleam! 

His eye will pierce the centuries' gray night ; 
Will scale the clouds ; will talk with moon and stars 
And tell them of what stuff their soils are made ; 
Will tear apart Earth's crust and gauge its age ; 
Will ride with Light the chargers of the Sun ; 
When comets dive into the Abyss of Night 
Will count the days their faces are unseen; 

39 



THE GARDENS OF THE SUN 

He will see cities in a water-drop 

And people globes of blood with mimic wars; 

His hand will build him fortresses of air 

And shower thunderbolts from eagle's wings ; 

Cross continents within a twinkling eye ; 

Will cut this ponderous earth in hemispheres 

And hurl huge mountains at their fellows' heads ; 

Armadas scuttle ere the day says done; 

Gibraltars turn to imponderable pulp ; 

Will light our villages with nothingness ; 

And conquer Time and Space with paper toys. 

That boy you dandle on your knee, 
Whose eyes are dancing now with glee, 
Surpasses Jove in majesty. 



THE GAKDENS OF THE SUN 

SOME leagues from where our Sultan halves the 
globe 
We see an island Fancy could descry 
From Dreamland's heights, and siren voices rob© 
With splendors on the tropic's pinions %. 

'Tis here, — 'twas born ere Christ ! — the Bo-tree 

stands ; 
The burning bush still burns with fiery spray ; 

40 



THE GARDENS OF THE SUN 

While cottonwoods bear flowers in their hands ; 
And plantains flap their flags along the way; 

And here the cocoa scorns the robber's hands ; 
And snow-drops peep from fens that reek with heat ; 
Goliaths shake their plumes across the land ; 
While rice upon rich eyots plants its feet; 

Here cinnamons with perfume load the breeze 
And chocolates that fill all Europe's cup ; 
The sap that shoes the world exhales from trees ; 
And we at dusk upon the breadfruit sup ; 

The talipot here reigns, — a bed by night, 
A tent by day, — and at its regal height 
A cannon shout awakes a giant flower 
And Death then lays Goliath in her bower. 

Tigers are Kings ; come see them stalk their prey, 
And hear the mammoth trumpet to his kin ! 
At times the cobra lifts his crest to say 
Such madness of luxuriance is sin. 

And here are toilers, garmented with gloom; 
At times an alabaster hall appears 
And Europe stalks from out a rustic tomb 
To shake his sword and wake the Tamil's fear. 

In this Nirvana there's a Yale of Sleep, 
And of this sylvan earldom Mab is Queen 

41 



BYRON'S VILLA AT RAVENNA 

And from its denes and closures genii peep, 
And birds of paradise their plumage preen ; 

And Laughter rings across a voiceless mere 
And Sweet Content is lord of every hearth ; 
The bird no bloody messenger need fear 
Nor need the kine bewail the bludgeon's wrath ; 

And when Hyperion dons his robe of rest 
And Night unwinds the tangled thread of Day, 
Then Mature folds her children to her breast 
And we who came to sneer bow down to pray. 

But yet in Eden stalked the ghost of Death ! 
Here, too, are vampires cloud a saffron sky, 
Here devil-plants inhale the poor fly's breath 
And panting Innocence still heaves a sigh. 



BYRON'S VILLA AT RAVENNA 

HERE Byron lived, and fumed and clutched 
at Eame, 
And swore to ravage earth and hell but snatch 
The peacock splendors of a corsair's name, 
And face a world of scorn but Virgil match ; 

42 



THE SEA-KINGS OF OLD CRETE 

'Twas in this nest that stormy petrel slept; 
And 'twas this terrace was the giaour's deck ; 
And here 'twas Frailty bitter showers wept 
This golgotha should prove an altar's wreck. 

Much to forgive ! and mountains to forget ! 
Fame fain would call these blotches on the sun, 
Bind up his wounds and with Cassandra run 
To see great Hector's crimson glories set; 

And let us bind a fillet round our eyes 

While Genius drags this chariot through the skies. 



THE SEA -KINGS OF OLD CRETE 

THERE were great men ere Agamemnon, 
Or those Phoenicians scoured a tideless main 
To bring from far Ceylon those pristine pearls. 

No longer Minos and his Labyrinth 

Are fishwives' tales ; nor is the Minotaur, 

Nor Daedalus and his sun-tempting flights, ' 

Nor Icarus, who melted in the sun, 

A fable spun by prehistoric liars. 

And those Athenian maids, and dragon's thirst 
They slaked, rise spectral from the past 

43 



THE SEA-KINGS OF OLD CRETE 

As does Stromboli from Time's sea of haze 
When belching from her blazing maw 
Primeval ruins centuries concealed; 

And Theseus, too, steps from Aegeus' door 
To avenge the wrongs his mother Athens bore, 
And slaughter him who tree-tops tied with men, 
And stretch Procrustes on Procrustes' bed. 

These legends now are stubborn facts ; 

And Cnossos now our eyes can see, 

And see that Labyrinth was Minos' maze; 

And almost Ariadne see 

To Theseus hand that silken thread 

And sword that slew the Minotaur. 

Kind spade ! You scrape the film 

From our near-sighted eyes 

And show us that old Sea-Dog face to face 

Who ruled the waves ere Lyra was begot; 

But you were kinder to unearth the plaques 

Whose mouths, now dumb, may learn to speak 

And tell the tales enamoured Homer's ears 

And Ajax and Ulysses used to tell 

Around their camp-fires, nights, 

While great Achilles sulked 

And azure-eyed Briseis stayed the fight. 



44 



BACK TO THE LAND 



BACK TO THE LAND 

OUE Mother dear ! — for so we love to say, 
And twine our fingers in your silver hair 
And think of Freedom's resurrection day, 
When you those Stuarts bearded in their lair ! — • 

You need your children back upon the land, 
You need the farmer and his fruitful hoe, 
The sweating plowshare ; need the horny hand 
And hearts of oak that on the hillsides grow. 

Too much, too long the shuttle and the loom, 
The smoking city and the foaming beer, 
Those cubicals whose faces grin at gloom, 
The factory that pilfers health and cheer, 

Have sapped your strength. The yeomen with 

their bills 
Were bulwarks 'gainst your foes of yore ; 
They brought you loving hands and iron wills 
And kept the world outside your castle door ; 

But now 'tis famished faces haunt the way; 
'Tis bending backs beshrew the landlord's nod ; 
Take back, my Love, your heirlooms from his sway, 
And send the cottar back upon the sod ! 

45 



THE ROMANOFF TOMBS 



THE ROMANOFF TOMBS 

YES, sleep, ye warders of the dead ! 
They need no watchers ; for the crown 
Of thorns has seared an emperor's head 
Must with the garbardine lie down; 

And like all grandeur Man has wed, 
Must kneel and kiss the parent sod; 
Earth is our birthmark and our bed ; 
Naught is eternal except God. 

How long 'twas Babylon outstared 
The sun and with her brazen face 
The scarps and scars of Ruin dared ; — 
Now of her glories find a trace ! 

See seon upon seon run 
That race with Time since God awoke 
From chaos' maze the sleeping sun ! 
'Twas yesterday that Man first spoke. 



46 



RAPHAEL 



KAPHAEL 

NAUGHT but his brushes and his crimson fame t 
Great Spirit, oft the pitying tear has come 
When some live form has stepped from out your 

frame 
As if from off the doorstep of your home ; 

God only knows your sweat to keep a roof 
Above your head, a bed to sleep upon, 
While weaving out of air a golden woof 
Of glory such as kings have seldom won. 

Alas ! that man should be unkind to God's 

Best sons ! that dunghill fowls and nature's clods 

Should wash their hands in the blood of souls who 

bring 
To earth what makes life's winter gorgeous spring ! 

And yet 'tis aching feet that win the goal, 
And tears and heart-aches 'tis unveil the soul. 



47 



SELF - LOVE 



SELF - LOVE 

THE Devil 'tis distilled a juice, — 
'Twas stewed in Hell, and Mammon 
stirred the brew ! — 
And mixed in one retort those essences 
Will poison all the springs of joy; — 
A cobra's sting and tiger's tooth, 
A viper's foot and scorpion's tongue, 
A deadly nightshade, miser's soul, 
The venom of an aspic's tail, 
And adder's skin and aconite — > 
And cooled the broth with glacier's blood. 

He fashioned it in moulds 

By myriads, and of a walnut's size, 

In shape a human heart, 

And called the bawd — Self-Love ; 

And when he finds an enemy 

To curse in some despite, 

He puts this effigy therein. 



48 



THE KISS OF DEATH 



THE KISS OF DEATH 

HER child the Scourge of Man held in its 
grip; 
Each breath that choked his breathing choked 

her heart; 
Her nights were golgothas of weariness; 
Nor Love and Death were far apart. 

At last a seraph came on silver wings 
And that lone mother's heart with manna fed 
And sang the song was sung at Lazarus' tomb : 
" Give up, O Grave, give up your dead." 

In ecstasy the mother kist those lips 

So long had panted for the bridegroom's breath ; 

Alas ! that Love so oft Nepenthe sips ! 

That kiss ! It was the kiss of Death. 



49 



AT MANHOOD'S GATE 



AT MANHOOD'S GATE 

A MAIDEN knocked at Manhood's gate, 
And Agamemnon, King of Men, 
Threw wide the ponderous port of state 
Had hid Olympia from her ken. 

She was as lovely as the Dawn ; 
Aurora, rising from the sea, 
The wonders of the dancing faun 
Were not more beautiful than she. 

Her voice ! 'Twas like Aeolia's lyre 
When Psyche touched its trembling strings ; 
Her eyes ! They shone with that rapt fire 
That lights Cecilia's when she sings. 

And such a charm was in her mien 
He thought she was Apollo's child, 
And such a graciousness was seen 
As is Diana's in the wild. 

And Manhood's King was dazed with awe, 
Eor all his haunts had been with men, 
With those who make the Olympian law 
Which rules the mountain and the glen, 

50 



AT MANHOOD'S GATE 



The market-place, palestra, halls 
Where Justice sits with single sight 
And Sovereignty, stentorian, calls 
And Chivalry prepares for fight. 

Go back, he said, to your lone home ! 
Go, list to Corydon's hot sighs, 
And light with love his saddened eyes ! 
And when your rosy cherubs come, 
Still you their hungry cries 
With tales of Troy; 
And tell your boy 
Of Helen and Briseis and the toy 
They made of Trojans, Greeks and Myr- 
midons ! 
Come ! dry your tears 
And choke Ambition's fears ! 
You say there have been Amazons 
If Legend tells you true ? 
That maids are sighing still for shields ? 
And crave the sword that Manhood wields % 
But Maidenhood and Manhood, too, 
Will bind their weeping brows with rue 
When such Laconian loss of sex 
The heart of Sovereignty shall vex. 



51 



A SLEEP OF CENTURIES 



A SLEEP OF CENTURIES 

ASLEEP of centuries, 
Like Circe's isle ere Circe came ! 
The silence of a continent 
When Morpheus is Nature's priest 
And Sleep, his sire, is lord of land and mere; 
No hamlet's incense soils the breeze 
That fans the face of scarp and tarn. 

The tiger is the woodland's Khan, 
And when he leaps upon his prey 
The soul of Solitude 
Awakes from a long aeon's dream. 

Come, goddess of the stately stride 

To whom the minuet is dear, 

Staid Polyhymnia, 

Thou whose cothurnus heroes wear, 

Come, take my stylus in your hand, 

And guide a limping, stammering acolyte ! 

Near where that circle of the sun 
Divides our globe in hemispheres, 
There is an island cloyed with wealth 
Of fragrance, foliage and flowers 
And fruits would glut a Sybarite, 
And gardens hanging in mid-air 

52 



A SLEEP OF CENTURIES 



Would still the Grecian Ceres' sigh 
For her demesnes on Helicon. 

'Tis Anaradhapura ; big in miles 

As our great regent of the British Isles ; 

Who reeked with populations 

In days when Csesar trod those Albian Hills. 

Fair city of the Cingalese, 

How long you lay in dreamless ease ! 

But in those centuries forgot 

A hundred fountains fed your thirst, 

Canals and conduits led their floods 

To feed the arteries that feed the soil ; 

Dagobas tall as London's Paul, — 

One shoulder high to our high shaft, — 

Great shrines to Buddha with Cyclopean walls 

Would bring the blush to Cheops' dusky cheek, 

All tell us of another Babylon, 

Another Golgotha in fair Ceylon. 

Here then a scion we could see — 

And still can daze our eyes — 

Of that ambrosial, sacred tree 

Beneath which Buddha took those naps 

His worshippers call ruminations ; 

And here were lakes that Mammon's shears had cut 

When Romulus was dangling Rome in swathing 

clothes ; 
And trees — their children greet us now — 
Whose blossoms rival Kashmir's butterflies. 

53 



A SLEEP OF CENTURIES 



Alas, a stranger came ; 'twas Massacre ; 

And Guddah bows and bills 

Now slew their brothers, thought their foes ; 

And Aryans came and picked the Nomad's bones ; 

And all the soil was fed with savages. 

And Tamils came and scalped the Aryan plumes. 

Proud Man! When wind and water, air-blown 

Pride 
Have ta'en their flight, you are a cup of clay ! 

But how did Ruin's buzzard claw 
Crush in its grip this monarch's pride \ 
'Twas War, 'twas Famine, Cholera, 
Miasma and Malaria : 

'Twas those fierce imps, unseen but infinite, 
Who make our flesh their battlefields. 

And when this Hunger had devoured its fill, 
Came Pestilence, with banners flaunting high, 
And marshaled her grim cohorts till the sky 
Was black with vampires, shutting out the sun ; 
Miasma, too, rose from her fetid pools 
And beckoned to her dragons, fever-spouting, 
And swept the land like Aetna's sulphur storm 
Until those imps, so infinite, must dance Death's 
Dance. 

Nor did that hydra, Famine, lag behind, 
But brought her harpies to the fray 

54 



A SLEEP OF CENTURIES 



And slew thein carcases for vulture feasts 
Till nothing breathed could shake a brother's hand 
Had not grown impotent through sin and woe ; 
The jungle's lord was lord, defied his overlord 
And, tyrant-like, sucked up his subjects' blood — 
Except they seized some dolphin by the prow 
And swam the coral seas to India. 

Fair Eldorado ! You were Asia's ghost, 

Aye, more, a paradise for tree and beast, 

But Gobi's sands for him had been your khan. 

'Tis true the Pleiades still shone 

And Sirius, as always, queened the skies; 

'Tis true the Southern Cross still lured men's eyes 

And larks from out their skyey towers sang; 

The snail, too, bore his house upon his back 

And palms still shook their two-edged swords, 

While tamarinds, too, waved their plumes; 

But 'twas for sightless eyes ! 

'Twas thus that sleep of centuries 
Fell on this Eden like black mist; 
'Twas thus her golden argosies 
The hand of Desolation kist ; — 
So, too, on Rome's Campagna fell 
Wan ghosts and goblins hatched in Hell, 
While Famine fed the bats and crows 
And Pestilence shed leprous snows. 

Both live again ! The jungle's rage 
In places blurs the Buddhist page; 

55 



A DEN OF THIEVES 



Where Affluence once trod 
The winds and water ride roughshod j 
And sons of Cheops cut the sky, 
The palace lifts its head on high, 
The fens now curb their lordly pride, 
And Culture nestles by their side. 

Let Ruin stalk! The farmer smiles, 

And Man and Art arrest their wiles; 

Those silkworms of the sea Phoenicians craved 

When have such corsairs trod the seas 

From here to those proud shafts of Hercules ? - 

The sea of British venture long has laved. 



A DEN OF THIEVES 

ENSCONCED beneath a gorgeous dome, 
A den of thieves has filched a home, 
And Cade and Robin Hood exploit a land 
Around whose capital a nation stand 
To chant the paeans of the free 
And sing them with a lover's glee. 

But even round Christ's manger stood 
Some parasites to steal his food, 
And 'to a prophet's holy shrine 
Have bandits come to steal the wine. 

56 



A DEN OF THIEVES 



Come, see these vandals and their bristling 

snouts, 
Who fight for both feet in the trough; 
Come hear them squeal and hear the swinish 

shouts 
Of maws are smeared with bran and broth ! 

The people now a mash would mix 
And duties, rates and tariffs fix, 
And brigands come from all the land 
By self or proxy ; — 
Mad Circe's was no greedier band ! — 
And every bawd has brought his doxy. 

Nor is to-day the only Satyrs' feast ; 

For yesterday these lobbies reeked with filth, 

And vultures fought, and cloven-footed beast, 

To rob our land of spoil and spilth 

That each one to his bailiwick might say, 

" Behold a glutton's greed and robber's prey ! " 

A few wan hearts for mercy plead ; 

" Your mother bares her breast for you 

'Gainst War and Anarchy ; in direst need 

Her flag is on the walls, and heart is true ; 

But you — base ingrates ! so was Leah's child — 

Would pick the coppers from a dead man's eyes 

And stab the breast you nursed ! Negritos' child, 

Would rob a graveyard when the death-watch flies." 



57 



GARDEN OF THE UNFORGOTTEN 



GARDEN OF THE UNFORGOTTEN 

THIS world has towering Alps of joy, 
And fens of sorrow, too, 
But favors to an orphan hoy 
Are stars within the blue. 

My garden of the unf orgotten 
Has many fruits like these, 
Kind words by Sympathy begotten, 
That grow on spirit-trees. 

Have you of true Achates heard ? 
Have you some friend whose heart 
Has come to be a household word ? 
When he and Joy must part 

Oh ! show him Friendship's holy love ; 
Be like the turtle-dove 
When whirlwinds bare old Winter's bones 
And drive to southern zones ! 

And why ? Because you love him well ? 
Nay ! Some can never tell 
The love lies close to their dumb lips ! 
When he life's hemlock sips 

58 



LION'S HEAD 



And Sadness from his shoulder strips 
The cloak Pride draws so tight, 
And when that fierce electric light 
Shows you where Famines live 

There is naught else so sensitive ; 
Beware, then, lest Estrangement grow ! 
A look can scar the heart of Woe. 



LIOJSPS HEAD 

MY garden, cattle, and my trees, 
Acres where ^Nature's giants stand 
And wave defiance to the Storm-King's frown ! 
Old Lion's Head, who for a million years 
Has gazed across a waste of beckoning meads, - 
Now wet with Ocean's tears, — 
And heard grim Minot tell that awful King, 
Thus far, no farther shalt thou come ; 
I love to comb your mane and call you mine ! 

'Twas on this spot the Law established Right 
Eirst on this continent, 
And set the Colonies their boundary ; 
'Tis yonder liquid line that for a mile 
Defies the river's rage 
Is Eellsmere's boundary. 

59 



GOOD - FELLOWSHIP 



The gaudy Insolence of Wealth 
Stalks by our door, but never stops ; 
Crusoe was no more lord ; 
Those children of the bosky wild 
Whose empire is the air 
Pay homage to our manor rights. 

And yon tall water-tower 
Proclaims a sovereignty 
As sacred as proud Windsor's keep; 
None — save that Gorgon Skeleton 
Who calls both great and small 
To batten in his banquet hall — 
Can touch this sod 
Except we nod. 



GOOD - FELLOWSHIP 

THE gods of fellowship sat down 
With wines and good cigars 
To see what fellow they would crown 
The Czar of all the Czars ; 

They sang and smoked and drank their 

fill, 
And nothing did by halves, 
60 



A TOWER OF VICTORY 



And then they voted with a will 
Their Czar was from the Slavs. 

But from the men ! The women ? INo ! 
Not born for fellowships ! 
Cossets when babies, when they grow 
Freedoms meet pouting lips. 



A TOWER OF VICTORY 

HAD Giotto seen the Kutab Minar 
His eyes had swum in wonderment 
And feared his hand had been eclipsed. 
A tower of Victory and Fame, 
It outlives chronicle, outlives 
Its fashioner's, its builder's name ; 
Seven centuries have seen its face, 
Yet Ruin's paw is paralyzed; 
'Tis victory victorious, 
A cynosure of constancy, 
A pillar to uphold the sky, 
A rival of Italia' s child. 

Its art it learnt in Persian schools ; 
The Taj, too, is a marble wonder 
Could bring the blush to Phidias' cheek ; 
61 



AN UNFORGOTTEN MINSTREL 

His Parthenon has line, proportion, 
And beauties born of these great sires ; 
But oh, the Taj has loveliness 
Will make a lover's heart stand still ; 
It speaks, it breathes, it sings and sighs 
And starts the tear-drop in our eyes. 

The Kutab, no ! 'tis not pathetic ; 

But 'tis a sword Cyclopean, 

A staff could steady Atlas' stride 

When he this globe bore on his back ; 

It tells the great Iconoclast, — 

So Cheops told him long agone, — 

That though his teeth may gnaw and 

grind 
The puppets of a day to dirt, 
This tower stays the tides of Time 
As Teneriffe stays Neptune's rage. 



AN UNFORGOTTEN MINSTREL 

KNEEL! take your shoes off! bare 
your head ! 
You stand before a singer's shrine ! 
'Twas near to Delhi, and we fed 
On manna and on wine. 

62 



DELILAH 



'Twas like his soul ; 'twas pure and white ; 
And other worshippers stood there ; — 
As pure as pearl; a goodly sight 
Where ruthless Time had stripped all bare ; 

For all was ruled by desolation, 
And Pestilence had scarred the ground ; 
Is there a place in God's creation 
Where more of ruin can be found ? 

Oasis in a desert waste! 

And there this Moslem singer lies; 

But centuries on centuries haste 

To sing his songs with swimming eyes. 

Bring roses, pansies to his grave, 
And string again his rusty lyre ; 
For he was gentle, true and brave, 
And burned with true Parnassian fire. 



DELILAH 

DELILAH ! If you were a cannibal, 
And dwelt in Fiji, not in this fair town 
Where Chivalry respects no animal 
Beneath Avernus gentle hearts would drown, 

63 , 



ROWENA 



You would not wear that gilt, bedizened crown, — 
That seraph's smile upon a Gorgon's face ! — 
But on a spit, heels-hung, your skin would brown 
And frizzle with a shining gobbler's grace. 

We know, a few, why sweet Alexis chose 
To lie so still within the sea-wolves' cave, 
Where basilisks his warm heart never froze 
And days were placid as lone Tahoe's wave. 
Life has its joys and Death its ghostly woes, 
But 'neath its wave no thorn nor viper grows. 



EOWENA 

SWEET little rose 
That on the meadow blows 
And frankincense distills 
That all our being thrills ! 

You have no taint of earth, 
And from your very birth 
Some spirit of the air 
Lives in your face so fair. 

To-day you lay upon your bed ; 
It seemed as if some seraph said: 
I am too delicate a flower 
To live except in some wild bower; 
64 



AN ANTIDOTE FOR GRIEF 



But have no fear, and shed no tear ! 
The birds will always guard my bier ; 
They'll sing to me from dawn till night ; 
The stars will watch from dark till light. 



AN" ANTIDOTE FOR GRIEF 

TO run from Grief keep on the run 
From dreaming dawn to dying sun, 
And never stop to catch your breath ; 
To stop is lingering death. 



IMMORTAL LONGINGS 

ONE proof there is, and 'tis the chief : — 
Man's daily hunger to live on ; 
Let others challenge our belief 
But this shines on as shines the sun. 

Who would not live ? Ah ! who would die, 
Would cut the thread and turn to dust ? 
Would close for aye the great soul's eye 
And like old iron wane and rust ? 

65 



IMMORTAL LONGINGS 



Yet, other instincts hold us fast ; 
Who would not have enough of gold 
While this mortality shall last ? 
Or who would stay within his fold ? 

Great Mature spoke when Caesar said, 
While riding through some Gallic home, 
He'd rather be that village's head 
Than be the second man in Rome. 

A third there is with these akin: 
That frailty of the kingly mind 
That longs a kingly praise to win 
And leave a kingly name behind ; 

Or leave a glimmer on the sea, 
A ripple of the spirit's breath 
Will nicker when the soul is free 
To cross the trackless void to death. 

Immortal hopes ! ah, who would not 
Be fellow with his fellow men 
And not a beast and soon forgot ? 
Is our short day the spirit's ken % 



66 



GATES AJAR 



GATES AJAR 

THE Gates of Trinity swing wide 
And cloven-footed Sorrow enters in ; 
Emelia has become Death's Bride 
And lies here on her crimson bier, 
And many a heart, too sad to shed a tear, 
Bewails that Fate could count it sin 
To linger longer on this worldly sphere. 

The chancel glows with purple lights 

Kind Flora plucked before the dew was sprent ; 

And lilies, grown into a cross, 

Tell how a seraph's soul with nature fights ; 

And maiden hands have garlands sent 

To tell how Charity bemoans her loss ; 

Chopin rings chimes upon our hearts 

Turns them to keyboards for his dirge ; 

His spirit-hands and heart-aches urge 

Our souls to those sepulchral haunts 

Where Death makes banquets of our mortal parts ; 

And Charon's greed his banner flaunts 

And marshals us along the Stygian way 

Has made December of a bridal May. 



67 



BEAUTIFUL, BUT NOT HOME 



BEAUTIFUL, BUT NOT HOME 

I STRODE along a bay that British ships 
Had peopled with a commerce unsur- 
passed ; 
And pride was tingling to my finger-tips ; 
My British blood was racing fast, 

For here had Albion found an eagle's nest 
And brought the benedictions of her law 
And prest a pristine people to her breast 
And forged these battlements I saw. 

'Tis beautiful ! 'tis Eio ! but not home ! 
I said, and asked a dweller on the Peak — 
If hearts had loved in Devon's dales to roam 
Still heard the voice of Childhood speak ? 

A sadness bowed his head, tears dimmed his 

eye: — 
" I pray that when my sun is in the west 
My ear may hear again the thrush's cry, 
My bones may in dear Devon rest." 



68 



THE DURBAR 



THE DURBAR 

AT last ! For hours we sweltered in that sun 
Of India to scan those turbaned hordes, 
And tribes, and castes had o'er an empire run — 
By tonga, ekka, bullock-cart, by train, on foot — 
To see this pageant of the golden East 
Now shimmers like a wind-tost sea. 

Kabul was here, and Punjab, too, 

And Indus and the Ganges, and the snows 

That diadem Himal'ya sent their sons ; 

Nepali and Bengali, too, had brought 

Their iridescent hues ; big Sikhs 

And Kashmir's ebon children sat in rows ; 

The Pass had seen the fretted plumes 

Of Fortune's petted Macedon sent Afghans; 

And as the rainbow-tides swirl to and fro 

Expectancy lights every eye 

And coming joys send heralds on before. 

The Fort's high gates fly wide ! They come ! 
The feathered lances of a cohort gleam. 
Is Raleigh here ? Does Bayard live again ? 
A river courses through long crimson banks 
Of men were costumed by the Night and Dawn. 

69 



THE DURBAR 



Look ! Look ! on gold and silver howdahs sit 
Ma'rajahs, rajahs, nawab lords, 
And tower aloft on monuments that move 
With elephantine stride, their leathern sides 
Caparisoned with cloths of burnished gold 

Has cost a province's tax, a legion's toil ; 
They swing along like behemoths come back, 
And we, whose eyes are tuned to smaller deer, 
Think Cyclops or the Titans have returned. 

They pass. The pageant fades. The multitude — 
A wondrous vision ! — turns to rainbow tides 
Again and whirls and twists and swirls and surges, 
Phantasmagoric, like kaleidoscopes. 

What monkeys we are in our grays and blacks ! 

We make our women goddesses, 

Aspasias, Cleopatras, Yenuses, 

And dress ourselves like undertakers' mutes; 

Oh, that the Cavaliers could come again ! 



70 



ELOQUENCE TRIUMPHANT 



ELOQUENCE TRIUMPHANT 

I CLIMBED the Pnyx one April day; 
A halo glorified Piraeus' strand ; 
The Queen of Art stood sentry 'cross the way ; 
And here a concourse stood from all the land ; 

Demosthenes was on the people's hill; 
Assailed, defamed, denied the Statesman's crown 
Eor hurling gibes at Macedonia's frown 
And crying war upon the Anarchs' will ; 

An angered majesty bestrode his brow 
And streams of lava surged across his tongue : — 
u All Ages would cry shame if Greece should bow 
To Philip, drunk with pride, ambition-stung ! " 

A shout goes up. Sometimes Night jumps to Day. 
Our King shall have his crown! His foes we'll 
flay J 



71 



THE IMMORTALS 



THE IMMORTALS 

BOOKS that stretch through empty 
aisles, 
Books in stacks for miles on miles, 
Books that woo with siren wiles, 
Books that fade with Fashion's styles, 
And not a thousand are Immortals ! 

Books were once a fragrant field, 
Books a torrent's tears congealed, 
Books that Love's aroma yield, 
Books that bore a paynim's shield, 
And not a thousand are Immortals ! 

Books were tented fields of Mars, 
Books that reek with heroes' scars, 
Books that smell of prison bars, 
Books with wings that seek the stars, 
And not a thousand are Immortals ! 

Books that sing like Christmas bells, 
Books as stale as stagnant wells, 
Books are ghastly sentinels, 
Books that moulder in their cells, 
And not a thousand are Immortals ! 
72 



A FLICK OF WOOL 



Children out of cobwebs wove, 
Children from the roof tree rove ; 
Pallas from the head of Jove 
Not a stranger treasure-trove; 

Alas, that children should be mortals ! 



A FLICK OF WOOL 

WEEP! weep for Tit yrus ! 
He lies here on his bier ; 
And let his sheep come near, 
For they would shed their tear ! 

He was their faithful friend 

In sunshine and in gale; 

And when Campagna's skies portend 

A storm, did e'er his foresight fail ? 

And bring his crook and woolly cloak 
And lay them here upon his bier ! 
For when the Tramontana spoke 
They drove away the ghost of Fear. 

And lay a flick of wool within 
This box that holds a name will wane ; 
73 



THE GOLDEN PAGODA 



This is his passport 'gainst the sin 
Keeps shepherds Sundays from the fane ; 

For when the Judgment trumpets sound 
And Resurrection's Angel takes his hand, 
And when the dead shall leave the ground 
And round Jehovah's throne shall stand, 
This flick of wool shall tell his tale, 
Why he was from the church's pale. 



THE GOLDEN PAGODA 

THOU shrine of a religion counts it sin 
To shed the blood of beasts ! or even man 
Himself if marshaled by the trumpet's din 
And led in cohorts by some brutal Khan ! 

You guard the manes of Peace's great apostle ; 
And your tall steeple laughs at London's dome, 
The Pagan War-God's fane. What if men jostle 
Their fellows till they scarce can find a home ? 

Is he a basilisk who loves to lie 

As lizards lie within the Sun-God's arms ? 

74 



THE HOLY SYNOD MILITANT 

To him who has no roof except the sky 
The primrose joys of idleness have charms ; 

'Tis life to lie within the tropic's wings 
And dream of those delights Nirvana brings. 



THE HOLY SYNOD MILITANT 

COME, rally to the standard of the Church ! 
Set up her aegis ! tell the Russian world 
We will not from our battlements be hurled ; 
The miter shall upon the scepter perch ! 

Remember Italy ! When she would rise 
And place upon her head the Phrygian cap, 
The Romish hierarchy lost the prize 
Kind Fortune would have laid upon her lap ; 

Coquetted like a belle behind her walls ; 

Stood marking time while Freedom thun- 
dered by ; 

'Tis thus the crown from flabby fingers falls 

And leaves the Church with naught to do 
but sigh. 

75 



THE GOLDEN SHELL 



No sighs for us ! have we not ever led 

The Czar and people in our guiding strings 2 

Who made the Czar ? Who are the people's 

head ? 
Let Kome still moan! The Holy Synod 

sings ! 

The Duma now shall be our battlefield, 
And here the Church shall forge the sword 

of state! 
No quarter ! No ! 'tis death before we yield ! 
The Holy Synod t still shall she be great. 



THE GOLDEN SHELL 

COME, stand on Peligrino ! gaze 
With wonder on this Golden Shell ! 
Has Nature in her noblest phase 
A cameo cut with such a spell ? 

Nor is it gold that gilds this bowl ; 
'Tis citron fruits emboss its slope ; 
And Clio 'tis who tints the scroll ; 
.Volcano's sister carved the stope. 
76 



ECHOES OF THE REVOLUTION 

Let Midas scowl and grant his wealth, 
You squander with a wanton's hand ; 
Yet give us not the wanton's brand ; 
But fill and drink Sicilia's health ! 

Since Time her glass began to turn 
Who did not for this goddess burn % 



ECHOES OF THE REVOLUTION 

AWAKE, fond Memory! 
Speak, Sons of Liberty, 
And you, too, Victory, 
Silent a century ! 
And tell of those enhaloed years 
Were wet with Revolution's tears ; 
Of Hope, when 'twas a lonely star 
And seen, like Sirius, afar, 
A rainbow in a troubled night, 
A ghost that wooed a sickened sight \ 
And Mght ne'er lured the Day, 
December shadowed May, 
And scarce a candle's ray 
Illumed the patriot's way. 

Bring back the bugle's bray, 
And bring the warring fray ; 
77 



FAME AND VICTORY 



Again let cannon roar 

And screaming rockets soar ! 

And let us see brigades in camp, 

And Minutemen, and hear their tramp ; 

And see the parson doff his stole 

And with the yeoman seek the goal 

While mothers watch the fight with awe; 

Shall Britain rule and mould our law ? 

'Tis this the people ask 

And buckle to their task. 

The shock ! the fearful shock ! 

'Twill Britain's gate unlock. 



FAME AND VICTOEY 

TWO towers court old Chitor's skies, - 
A tower to Victory and Fame, — 
And lift aloft our hungry eyes 
And fire our fainting hearts to flame. 

Twin mothers of bold enterprise ! 
Twin necromancers of the Mind ! 
Bold wings on which Endeavor flies 
To leave dull Idleness behind ! 

'Tis you who burn the scholar's oil ; 

'Tis you who gild the patriot's toil ; 

78 



THE LAST KISS 



You find a home in every land, 
Upon the mountain and the strand. 

'Twas here Padmani led her band 
Across Death's dark and Stygian tide ; 
For she would save the harlot's brand 
Lucretia bore and be Death's bride. 

All kingly hearts are of one kin ; 
They love one altar, speak one tongue ; 
They all some meed of praise would win ; 
And all are brave and always young. 



THE LAST KISS 

I STOOD beside a coffin lid, 
Beside a father, mother gray, 
Before a long loved face was hid 
Eorever from the face of day ; 

And as she kist the marble mask 
The father's tears had wet like wine, 
I heard her trembling accents ask, — , , 
" May our last kiss, my dear, be mine? " 
79 



A LETTER OF CONDOLENCE 

For hers had been the first fond kiss 
Had prest the baby to her breast, — 
The sweetest nectar Nature sips ! — 
And she would seal that heart to rest. 



A LETTER OF CONDOLENCE 

A GRUB to-day; a butterfly to-morrow; 
On Thursday dead ; 
Unveil your head, 
Assuage, dear friend, your sorrow ! 
For 'tis the lot of Man : see yonder tree ; 
But yesterday it danced with glee, 
Its leaves were rippling like a river's reach; 
To-day its bare poles teach 

That Age has sucked its blood and supped its life 
And left it like a warrior spent with strife. 



THE STRUGGLES OF GENIUS 

NAUGHT but his paints and brushes ! But 
a fame 
As splendid as the Taj ! What bitter tears 
The Muse has shed that Rembrandt's name 
Should stand and cool its heels so many years ! 

80 



FALSE GODS 



His toil and penury ! This brave men bear ; 
Neglect ! This, too, but with a brave man's tears ; 
His harpy worries ! 'Tis these, ah, these that tear ! 
And then at time stole over him the fears 

Lest that Apollo who loves regal hearts 
Had not when in his cradle kist his lips 
Or had not forged the nerve of steel that grips 
The hand of genius in all kingly arts. 

But still, he said, no way but do my best; 
Let Fortune and the Ages do the rest. 



FALSE GODS 

I SAW to-day a blatant count, 
-*- A man with handles to his name, 
Who thought clay feet would help him 

mount 
The ladder leads to social fame. 

Know you how oft a rabbit breeds ? 
So oft he counts his kin as sand ; 
But giant cedars have few seeds 
Yet they can grasp old Adam's hand. 
81 



THE TRAIL OF THE HYDRA 

And there are aristocracies 
Give titles to first-littered sons, 
And there, too, are democracies 
Where litter after litter runs. 

Forget, vain count, your courtesan, 
Or robber baron, fat from pelf ! 
Don't be an ass, but be a man, 
And be an ancestor yourself ! 



THE TRAIL OF THE HYDRA 

ST. PETER died upon the martyr's cross, 
A victim of a bloody-minded law, 
And sad-eyed centuries have mourned his loss 
And cursed the fury of the Gorgon's claw. 

Yet patriots by hecatombs have died, 
And died the slaves of duty or to pay 
The price some tyrant places on his pride. 
And yet we scarce one litany can say. 

To die for others on a thankless field 
Is such a vulgar virtue 'tis a sin ; 
Yet War's apostles beat their brazen shield 
And dazzle young Marcellus with its din. 

82 



A POOL OF SILOAM 



One bandit chieftain we have dubbed the Great, 
Who stole Silesia from a hapless queen 
And turned all Europe to a den of hate 
That he might glitter in a vulture's sheen. 

Yes, and an empire builder we call wise 

For filching gems from France's luckless crown ; 

A madman's wisdom ! for this added size 

Has harried Europe with the War God's frown ; 

And where we go across her war-worn plain 
Her sons are hurrying to the Fields of Mars, 
Their faces livid with Eevenge's stain 
And banners blazoned with its blood-red stars. 



A POOL OF SILOAM 

OHOLY city of the Hindu Castes ! 
A million kneel each year before your shrine 
And call the Ganges their communion wine ; 
And once a thousand temples held their fasts 
And thought your waters sanctified their sins ; 
Thou holy Mecca of the Hindu world, 
'Tis here the neophyte Mrvana wins ; 
And here 'twas Buddha his first flag unfurled. 

83 



A POOL OF SILOAM 



The Juggernaut is dead ; no more outlasts 
The faith ground Innocence beneath its wheels ; 
No more the bride beside her husband burns ; 
And who, when gazing on your temples, feels 
His creed alone celestial glory earns ? 

Great Ganges of the thousand springs, 
Who from Himalaya's swelling breast 
The milk of many glaciers brings, 
What terrors in your bosom rest ! 

As now I stand upon your banks 
And gaze within your leaden eyes, 
'Tis strange that where your waters rise 
Such kings should stand in serried ranks ! 

And stranger that such giants' feet 
Should stalk to where such cities meet 
And Commerce with such fever runs ; 
To-day, too, is your wedding feast ! 
And Volga, Yang-tse, monarchs' sons, 
Salute you, Primate of the East. 



84 



PATERFAMILIAS 



PATERFAMILIAS 

FULL half a century its winding sheet 
Has wound about the world and scarcely one 
Of all you greeted in the village street 
With tfiat sweet smile was like a melting sun 

Can tell the tale. And yet 'twas Yesterday, 
Grown gray, who said, of all the sons of men 
He knew since Boyhood wore the garb of May, 
Of all he'd met on mountain or in glen, 

^NTot one so filled his soul's admiring eye. 
One scene outlives the winter of these years 
As sunlight glitters on a frozen sky : — 
You were upon your bier, and bitter tears 

Stood in the eyes of children, — crippled boys 
And girls, — who gazed upon your marble face. 
Our eyes see mounts that gleam with holy joys, 
But seldom one with such a moving grace ! 



85 



GOLDEN TIPS 



GOLDEN TIPS 

" T)UT pick me only Golden Tips ! " 

-*-* It was a bride of fair Ceylon, 
A planter's daughter ; and her lips 
A dusky islander had won ; 

" For golden tips 'tis flavor teas ; 
And my young days have ever sung 
Of honeymoons on silver seas 
And wedding bells on rainbows hung." 

This son of Erebus loved well — 
As well as Albion his rose — 
The fragrance of his crimson bell 
That on fair Candy's hillside grows ; 

And she whose cheek could match the rose 
Loved, too, her deadly nightshade well ; 
And yet we wondered why she chose 
To ring her chimes on that black bell. 

Lo, dusky children came in time, 
And eyes came, too, like living coals ; 
But mothers from our Northern clime 
Eorgot to ask them to their foals. 

86 



HEART - PHOTOGRAPHS 



But life is not all honeymoon ! 
For Hunger came and Fever frowned; 
But 'twas the Plague that came so soon 
And dug those furrows in the ground. 

Again a ghost has raised their latch, 
And now beside the mother stands — 
I hear his sighs ! they shake the thatch ! 
A peon kissing pallid hands. 



HEART - PHOTOGRAPHS 

OUR verses are our photographs, — 
!Not of our faces, but our hearts, — 
For when a poet sighs or laughs 
He is no actor playing parts. 

The novelist draws characters, — 

Paints love and hate, paints faith and greed ; 

? Tis not his heart your passion stirs, 

For he makes masks to suit each need. 

But poets paint as does the sun 
And wear the soul upon the breast; 
You need no lantern, you can run 
And read the heart and its behest. 
87 



CASTE IS GOD IN INDIA 



CASTE IS GOD IN INDIA 

WHO touches British turf is free ! But Caste 
Is overlord in India, and we 
To Custom and her fetish are bound fast 
Though Britain's other sons ne'er bend the knee. 

A fence of steel 'tis hedges us about, 
And grips our children in a giant's jaw ; 
Our birthmark is a brand we cannot flout, 
Our birthright is a chain that has no flaw ; 

Its links were forged within a stithy hot 
As Vulcan's forge in Aetna's blazing maw, 
And Fashion cooled and tempered them to Law 
The harpy centuries have ne'er forgot. 

Our creed stamps heretics as imps of sin 
And disinherits them and all their kin. 

Pour water on a desert ; it will bound ! 
Pour knowledge in the mind ; it, too, will leap ! 
Who is there would be pinioned to the ground ? 
Who would in Folly's castle always sleep ? 

88 



CASTE IS GOD IN INDIA 



In other lands we see the peasant rise 

And don the sage's robe and steer the state ; 

America lifts Labor to the skies 

And knights her toilers when she knights the great. 

The mind ! Who can an eagle's flight suppress ? 
He knows no chains ; from moor to mount will soar ! 
He calls the sun his friend; who can the soul sup- 
press ? 
The soul is famine-fed and ever calls for more. 

But we, alas ! are married to the Earth, 

Isot can we break the bands were ours at birth. 

Three thousand Castes! Three hundred million 

slaves ! 
And slaves whose master is Primeval Law ! 
We are alive, yet dead in living graves, 
Our heads above our feet within the maw. 

A Brahmin, were his primal sire a priest 
As coarse as Calaban, is Brahmin still, 
And Toil must ever on Filth's orgies feast. 
E'en Plato could not cross a Brahmin's sill. 

The Priests ! 'Tis they who hatched this hellish 

scheme 
To escape the toiler's ban and sleep and dream ; 

89 



A THUNDERBOLT 



Oh, when has wit devised a sadder curse 

Or doomed mankind to drag a sadder hearse ? 

Awake, ye Sons of Darkness ! Find the light ! 
'Tis Freedom calls you from the Kealm of Night. 



A THTOTDEKBOLT 

WHO ever saw, close to, a thunderbolt? 
But few there are : and yet this very day, 
While we were flying in a mad revolt 
To find a refuge from the lightning's play, 

A holt — it sounded like a bombshell's shout — 
Swooped down as if 'twere hurled by Jove's own 

hand; 
And we, who then had reached our frail redoubt, 
The meteor saw before it struck the land. 

'Twas black ; and fire flashed from out red eyes ; 
The flames seemed nodules upon Thor's big mace ; 
It leaped, as 'twere a hydra, from the skies, 
And ate up iron with a glutton's pace ; 

And smothered us as 'twere Tartarean smoke; 
It seemed that God from out the clouds had spoke. 

90 



VENI! VIDI! VICI! 



VENI! VIDI! VICI! 

I CAME! I saw! I conquered! words that 
breathe ! — 
How few there are with living lava seethe ! — 
That sword that threw a scabbard in the Thames, 
The Khone, the Khine, the Tigris, Guadalquivir, 
The Nile, and that blue line Numidia hems 
And taught man's blood to flow as flows a river, 
With bridled lightning told the Tiber how 
Its Scythian shade constrained the Don to bow. 



UDAIPUR 

A DIADEM of golden sheen; 
A jeweled sea; a jasper wall; 
A tomb can keep the memory green ; 
And fanes that to the Godhead call ; 

Sweet haunts where saddened souls may rest 
In dreams of liquid loveliness ; 
Eair phantom island of the blest ! 
You lure all hearts from worldliness ! 
91 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 

APOSTLE to the slave ; 
The Madman's Moses; 
Czar of Silver Tongues ; 
Ked Sun of Erin : 
A Beacon Light to Poverty 
And all who serve the Minotaur ! 

'Twas on the Common's slope your baby feet 
Eirst prattled to a modern Athens' street ; 
And Youth first sang the vedas of the free 
And ground the blade that humbled Chivalry ; 
Set Eame upon the pillars of the sky ; 
Eirst heard and trembled at a maiden's sigh. 



A NAME THAT SMELLS 

TO call it would pollute the mouth 
Or breed a cancer on the tongue; 
And yet 'tis known by North and South 
And scorned by old and young. 
92 



GRASS TO-DAY; TO-MORROW STUBBLE 

And why ? for lawlessness shaming 
Guy Fawkes ! for turning maids to bawds ! 
For brigandage surpasses naming! 
Inciting arson's hordes; 

For frenzies shrieked in Madness' ear, 
Sucking the blood of Honesty, 
Anathemas no ear should hear, 
For prostituting Sympathy. 



GRASS TO-DAY; TO-MORROW STUBBLE 

TO - DAY but grass ; to-morrow stubble ; 
And here to-day, away to-morrow; 
From shore to shore a sea of trouble ; 
Our lives are naught but toil and sorrow ! 

So says the misanthrope ; the sage replies : 
Let this be true, it is the state of Man, 
All Nature's voices are not ravens' cries, 
Attune your ears to hear what harmonies 
they can! 



93 



TIME DOES NOT CURE 



TIME DOES NOT CURE 

OH, speak to her, dear marble face, 
And say 'tis well with you, 
And where you are there is no trace 
Of sadness; hearts are true. 

Four Christmases have struggled by, 
And still her woe she sips, 
And still the tear bedims her eye 
When you are on her lips. 

And tell her when the shadows fall 
And Day is drowned in Night, 
That she shall hear her seraph call ; 
Then darkness may grow light. 



EVANGELINE 

SHE is so gentle that a breeze, 
Blowing too rudely 'cross her face, 
The roses on her cheeks would freeze 
And shrivel all her grace. 
94 



A RACE WITH DEATH 



Have you e'er seen in Eastern lands 
The vine that when its heart is glad 
And you but touch it with your hands 
Will shrink as if 'twere sad ? 

Well, like that vine is this sweet girl 
And like that vine her heart bows down ; 
And I have seen her tendrils curl 
If Louis feigned a frown. 



A RACE WITH DEATH 

A TOILER! and with books! 
His pen had piled them in a heap 
Until their frowning looks 
Said only fools such hoardings keep; 

" Go bid the printer's devil come, 
Spend what is left of life with type, 
Eor grain unthrashed is but the sum 
Of folly ; sure your brain is ripe ! " 

" But books unread are piled in stacks 
Like silt beside a river's waste, 
And presses groan with broken backs." 
" Eb time for parley, haste ! " 
95 



THE ROMAN FORUM 



And so Age starts his race with Death ; 
Old Age is short of breath, 
And has short legs, faint heart, short eyes ; 
Meanwhile the vulture gnaws ; day flies. 



THE ROMAN FORUM 

THE Forum is the world's great cynosure ; 
What hungry eyes have fed upon this scene ! 
And still an Empire's wreck our eyes can lure 
And sear their staring balls with Ruin's gleam. 

Its flood of people is man's Amazon ; 
Concentric rivers, born in many a land, 
Have flowed for ages, and they still flow on. 
One wreck epitomizes all ! come, stand 

Where this world's demigod was burned to clay ! 
Stand here and warm your hands upon this stone, 
Still hot and will be till that awful day 
When Earth's last son shall hear Earth's latest 
groan ! 

Great Golgotha ! The richest of your mines 
Is this lone pyre, and saddest of your shrines. 

96 



RED VALOR 



RED VALOR 

RED valor is a virtue plentiful 
And life a jewel that should buy life's worth ; 
On Honor's Roll are heroes by the million 
Have shed their blood as clouds have showered rain ; 

A million died that Gaul might have its birth ; 
The Corsican mowed millions down like grain ; 
The God of War cries, " Kill," and ever " Kill," 
Nor has he in all ages drunk his fill. 

The dynasties built bulwarks out of men 

That some usurper or usurper's son 

Might draw his sword and say, " Behold my fools ! " 

Life's worth — 'twas once but as a cup of wine ! — 

Since peasants put the regal purple on, 
Has quadrupled, — men are no longer swine ; 
And mudsills, ere they die, now count war's cost ; 
They will not like the rats to cats be tost. 



97 



GOLF -SICK 



GOLF -SICK 

GOOD friend ! yours is a bloodless battlefield, 
And yours the balls can seek and make their 
holes ; 
But when the budding club of Thor we wield 
How oft we wish those holes were bowls ! 

Sweet wine of Youth ! the staff, the crutch of Age ! 
Aleestis' pastime ! Gyas' paradise ! 
Oh, when the balls have wings and eyes to gauge 
Their speed, they skim a field of ice; 

But ah, when imps of sin seduce their wits, 
Or germs are battling at cross purposes, 
]STot fields of ice they see, but bunkers, pits ; 
Nor Gyas then can make them whiz. 

To-day a pretty maid allured my foe, 
And, in despite, my baby caddy played — 
So well he sunk me in a muck of woe ; 
Old Age is not of willow made. 



98 



THE PURITANS 



THE PURITANS 

THAT noble band — a tale too seldom told I — 
Who shook the dust of kingdoms from their feet 
And faced the night were pick of Britain's fold, 
The kin of Hampden and the world's elite. 

Freedom to bare their faces to their God, 
And rule themselves, their consciences and swords, — 
This was their shibboleth ; they spurned a sod 
Denied it ; cast their lots with tufted hordes ; 

But bore the church and schoolhouse on their heads 
And read their Bibles by the pine-knot's flame ; 
Aye, faced the scalping knife to win a name 
Is hall-marked in the halls our Saviour treads ; 

Stood, gun in hand, while Hunger fed the mind, 
With ne'er a wish a peacock's plume to find. 



99 



POLE - MADNESS 



POLE -MADNESS 



"Tl I discovered the Pole!" 

-*- • "My ! But there is no Pole ! " 
" No, I discovered the hole 
Where the pole would have stood 
Had the pole been of wood." 
" You silly monk, all you have done 
Is find a midnight sun." 



AUGUST 

'fT^IS the time when the katydid shouts to his mate 
J- And the grasshopper clambers outside of his 
shell, 
And the Sun God is robed in his crimson of state 
And the cicada calls from the depths of the well. 

Salamanders we are as we fan ourselves hot 
And smile at the face in the end of the pot, 
And wish that some devil who knows how to swear 
Would swear till a blizzard had frozen the air. 

100 



THE BONE-SETTER 



THE BONE -SETTEE 

HE stood at the portal of death and he shouted, 
" Deliver ; " I opened my purse with a groan ; 
And 'twas so when our guards and our camels were 

routed 
And the Bedouins anchored our feet to a stone 

And rifled us down to the gold in our teeth ; 
But not so in the days and the ways that are fled ! 
When the sufferer lay like a corpse on the heath 
'Twas his doublet he gave him to pillow the head. 



DARK LANTERNS 

I HAVE a friend who lends me ghastly books, 
Books smell of sin and stale philosophy, 
With big-browed words and fierce and owlish looks 
Which from high battlements and steeples cry; 

I sometimes toil and sweat and snoozle through 
This jungle of dry bones to reach some hill, 

101 



THE PRIZE-FIGHTERS 



And wonder if the skies above are blue 
And if the glorious sun is shining still; 

A ray at times will sneak across my mind 
And ask what kind of springs can feed this well ? 
If Truth has fled and left its skin behind ? 
Or has Agnosticism naught to tell? 

For sweetest perfumes grow where sunlight shines 
Parnassian waters seek Castalian springs. 
The richest ores are found in placer-mines, 
And A j ax's shaft the bow of steel 'tis flings. 



THE PRIZE-FIGHTERS 

BIG Bill and Teddy, 
The faithless and the true, 
The fat and ever ready, 
And how the feathers flew ! 

Bill slugged and slugged 
But mostly slugged the air ; 
He scratched sometimes, and hugged, 
And sometimes fought unfair ; 
102 



CLAY GODS 



And once he hit a post, 
Hit once beneath the belt; 
That mountain was no ghost ! 
But he some bruises felt. 

For nimble-fisted Ted 
Was like a saucy fly, 
!Now on his nob or head, 
Now closing up an eye ; 

And as for punishment, 
That iron-moulder's fist 
When it a Spartan sent 
That rolled Ted to a twist, 

He bounded like a ball ; 
A game-cock, so they said, 
Had plucked a dunghill fowl; 
Ye gods, and how he bled ! 



CLAY GODS 

THE vitriol of life is politics, 
The madness of the under dog to gnash 
The mastiff's throat ! Oh, how we love the clash 
Of bullies, shillelahs' play and quartersticks ! 

103 



THE OWL'S COURT 



The hush of battleships, the clang of sports, 

The noiseless thunder of defiances, 

Hot bombs and cannon shots from paper forts ; 

Mad shrieks of rage at foes' alliances ; 

This babel drowns the tread of Science's feet, 

Howls down the silver rustling of the pen; 

We love so well these bellowings in the street, 

These frog-pond croakings of our tadpole men, 

This Boanerges storming Clamor's gate, 
We hear no music save this noise of State. 



THE OWL'S COURT 

MY Lord ! My Lord ! We pray your nod, 
my Lord ; — 
That Fortune slew — 'twill save the brand of 

Cain; 
'Tis thus those big-wigs beg the pundit's word 
About that tragedy that smote the main ; 

Eor days, aye, weeks, they lash that arctic sea 
With words and beat to froth those icy waves 
Had raged like Tritons 'gainst the iceberg's lea 
Where lay those Titans in their piteous graves ; 

104 



SUN - SICK 



But why this frog-pond tempest % tell us why 
Those ravens caw so to that big-browed owl % 
Is it they love to hear the raven cry 
Or do they hope to ape the surges' howl ? 

For well, too well, we heard that plaintive wail 

That like a diapason smote the world ; 

And Argus and Briareus the tale 

In thunder tones from shore to shore have hurled. 



SUE" - SICK 

OUR charger is bounding from out the red East, 
Headed straight for the stalls of the Sun ; 
He is champing his bits, churning seas into yeast, 
Kicking spray from his heels as we run ; 

And dozens, aye, hundreds, are up on his back, 
With their eyes on their homes in the West ; 
And we rowel his sides, and we give him a crack, 
And show him no mercy nor rest ; 

We are sick, ghastly sick of the pap of the East, 
Of its dirt and its darkies and heat, 
And tired of riding a ramshackle beast 
With no padding to soften the seat ; 

105 



BRINGING THE GOOD TO GOD 

And sick, too, of beef from a buffalo's flanks, 
Sick of fruits with the flavor of sand, 
Sick of making a mule of an artisan's shanks 
To traverse a sun-stricken land, 

And long for the wines of a forest-fed spring 
And a wind with the frost in its mouth ; 
Oh, give us a snow-field where sleigh-bells can sing ! 
We are sun-sick ! We hate the hot South ! 



BRINGING THE GOOD TO GOD 

WE prate of piety ; we plume 
Ourselves with peacock creeds ; 
We call the Chinese heathen; fume 
To clear God's acres of its weeds ; 

A convert costs a captain's pay ; 
But still we pass the hod, 
And still the tender-hearted pray 
To bring the good to God 

Yet wonder how they can be good, 
Be true and brotherly, 
And marvel how their state has stood 
On cold philosophy; 
106 



THE FOOT OF ADAM 



And what it was Confucius taught 
Could keep them so at peace 
While we were throat-cutting and fought 
Our brothers' backs to fleece ? 

No dogma is a panacea ; 

There is one God for all ! 

'Tis greed, unrighteousness and fear 

That causes man to fall. 



THE FOOT OF ADAM 

THE foot of Adam, Moslems say, 
But Buddhists say by Buddha done, 
Has left its imprint plain as day 
Across the pathway of the Sun. 

And pilgrims climb that pious peak ; — 
Old centuries have scanned their feet ! — 
And mid the clouds its impress seek 
That they may Man's first father greet. 

An iron ladder and a chain — 
By, legends say, young Macedon — ■ 
Helps neophytes that shrine to gain 
Upon that Athos of Ceylon. 

107 



THE SPHINX 



And can these soothsayers say wrong ? 
Still, none can doubt the Ages' eyes 
Have seen and snng in siren song 
That footprint in the frozen skies. 



THE SPHINX 

SILENCE! and hewn in stone! 
As passionless as sand; 
The desert is your throne, 
Your crown the Ages' brand ! 

No miracle of art 

Forged in Prometheus' heart; 

'Tis size that makes you great 

And clothes you with your robe of state, 

And Age 'tis lends you Grandeur's power ; 

But Age can gild a Druid tower. 

Bedizened with a crimson praise 
As if you were Apollo's care 
And not alone the Ages' heir 
No thrill of pride you raise, 
Nor can a lover ever feel 
That Joy along his senses steal 
That gazes on a Phidian face ; 
A Behemoth, without one grace ! 

108 



ROME A KALEIDOSCOPE 



EOME A KALEIDOSCOPE 

XTTHAT Roman does not love his Alban Hills ? 

▼ V Here Alba Longa lived, his Mother Eve ; 
And 'twas the dews that filled her fertile rills, 
So Delphi said, would Veii's scepter reave. 

The Sun, all day, has trod those spectral heights 
And fashioned footsteps out of lights and shades, 
Although the storm-king has bedimmed the lights 
Below till Peter's golden glory fades. 

Frascati, thence I scanned the wave-washed plain. 
Is there a scene of more suggestive mien % 
In Time's long night how oft its splendors wane, 
In Time's long day, how oft a silver sheen ! 

And what is more like life's kaleidoscope ? 
For here are Birth and Death, Heaven, Hell and 
Hope. 



109 



XANTHIPPE 



XANTHIPPE 

AYE, sting him with a viper's tongue ! 
For Tyranny the heart will freeze ; 
Eorget his genius ! 'tis not young ; 
And keep your lion at your knees. 

His earlier bride was Erailty's dove, 
And loved delights the twilight brings, 
And loved with Pan o'er downs to rove 
And list to Sylvia's silver wings. 

Eut your hand strikes a sterner lyre, 
A geyser from Vesuvian zones, 
Where sulphurs gush from sizzling stones 
And Aetna 'tis directs the choir. 

How Clytie trembled at her shade ! 
Xanthippe ! She's of lava made. 



110 



LAND WHERE ALL LOOK SAD 



LAND WHERE ALL LOOK SAD 

OLD India's serfs are sons of Gloom, 
And black with color as with cloud ; 
They seem like men who haunt a tomb, 
With faces wrapt in mildew's shroud. 

And here God's image is so scorned 
'Tis mated with the ox and ass 
And almost brays, is almost horned, 
And with the beast and snail must class. 

'Tis Caste has laid this Eden waste, 
And Toil has ground their faces thin ; 
Weighted their feet, as if some sin 
So burdened them they could not haste. 

What ! have they left all hope behind ? 
Is there no joy that Day can find ? 
And has their Dawn no rosy light ? 
Is Twilight but Cimmerian Night? 

Could there have been some former state, 
Some crime that forged an endless chain, 
That Fate should so their backs berate 
And stay that peace their hearts would feign ? 

Ill 



THE MAJESTY OF LAW 



And did that crime so choke that life 
That it chokes this till day is done ? 
And is Eternity an endless strife, 
Where Sin ne'er sees the setting sun ? 

And must life's millstones grind and grind 
And grind so fine all joy is crushed ? 
And will Futurity be never kind ? 
And must Day's voices all be hushed ? 

Can no repentance cure that vice ? 
And must sin gnaw till strength is spent, 
And cheat them with some new device 1 
Will Sadness never fold its tent ? 



THE MAJESTY OF LAW 

THE mills of Law grind fine ! grind sure but slow ! 
For some decades my hand has turned a crank 
And ground some wheaten grists and ought to know. 

A battery upon a foeman's flank 
Will startle Terror; so a battleship, 
When guns are shouting thunders, spouting shells, 
Will seize a nation in a Gorgon's grip 
And fright her with Golgotha's deadly spells ; 
Vesuvius and Earthquake's lurid hells 
Hang ghastly horrors upon Nature's lip. 

112 



SUFFRAGE IN CALIFORNIA 



But Law's cothurnus has a slower pace, 
Her lightnings foot it with a statelier trip ; 
And ye who gaze upon her lordly face 
Will see Jove's might, his majesty and grace. 



SUFFRAGE IN CALIFORNIA 



YOU'VE heard from California and what the 
women did ? 
They know a polecat's plumage before they catch his 

smell ! 
There's something in a woman's eye — not reason, but 

'tis quid ! — 
Knows blubber isn't brain-cell, and knows it mighty 
well. 



Those girls of California ! Oh, they're the girls of old ! 
A little pert, and not so slick as Philadelphia maids, 
But when a cowboy has a heart that's of the finest gold 
Their mouths are in a pucker before his pucker fades. 

No buttered smiles, nor sugared wiles, nor elephantine 

size 
Can fool the Sunset maiden, — she knows a buzzard 

flies, — • 
'Tis Teddy, her dear Teddy, can make those fishes rise ! 
And the way they rolled the vote up brought tears to 

Teddy's eyes. 

113 



BORN WITH FEET 



BOKST WITH FEET 

HOW lucky we were born with feet, 
Trouper and I ! 
Our friends make whirlpools of our street, 
Crazy to fly ; 

They scorn the sports of older ken 

And hate to tramp ; 
Let's show these monkeys we are men ! 

Come on, you scamp ! 



THE FACULTY OF SEEING 

THE genius and the fool are one in birth ; 
The faculty of seeing stamps their worth ; 
One sees a chariot in a two-wheeler cart, 
A cart the other sees and naught apart. 

Our world has many avenues to joy ; 
To see them is the essence of our being ; 
The wise man treads the same trail as the boy ; 
What makes him wise ? This faculty of seeing ! 

114 



BORN TO A THRONE 



BORN TO A THRONE 

NO baby should play with the thunders of state ! 
'Tis a trust for the people, an engine too great 
To be put in the hands of a plaything of Eate ! 

Oh, the fever we feel when he comes to the throne, 
And feel till we know that his pride is full blown ! 
Should Phaeton gambol with Jupiter's own ? 

Eor the hand at the helm should be that of a master ; 
He sails the state true and he sails the state faster 
Than one who was born to command a two-master. 

What Nestor his fortune would trust in the hands 
Of an urchin is heir of some lord of big lands ? 
His nights would be nightmares and smell of the 
sands ! 

And who can have wisdom unless he is knowing ? 
And knowing we know is a fountain o'erflowing, 
But not from a stripling whose whiskers are growing. 



115 



THE CURATE 



THE CURATE 

OH, why, pray why so stupid in your gown, 
So wise when we are romping on the hill ? 
Why prate of nothings like a country clown, 
But all our idle hours with knowledge fill ? 

Is there some priestly custom sets your pace ? 
Or does some wall of China hedge your mind ? 
Or is your heart unfitted for this race ? 
That heart so large it holds all human kind ! 

The Church ! 'twas once the lord of earth and hell, 
And man, poor man, a creeping, crawling thing ; 
He now drinks buckets-full from knowledge's well 
And England's monarch is hut Fashion's king. 

Should we sit down when in the Church's walls, 
Queen Mab would weave her web across our eyes ; 
" Stand up, my people ! " then the curtain falls ; 
To keep awake we weary men must rise. 



Come ! Come ! to Dullness, Moonshine give a sop, 

utrn 

116 



And let the Church outrun the cloister's goal ! 



MAIDENHOOD 



Don't snuff your talents with a candle top ! 
Our minds, our minds ! Feed them and feed the 
soul! 



MAIDENHOOD 

UNMAKKIED is arrested growth, 
An undeveloped maidenhood, 
Tho' oft 'tis happier than bridal troth ; 
No maid has e'er on Pisgah stood. 

No maid has at the cradle heard 

The sweetest word the tongue can say; 

Ne'er heard Hyperion's plighted word 

Nor seen Love's noblest empire gleam ; 

Nor has she held that hand of clay 

Against her breast and seen her gorgeous dream 

Fade like mirage across Sahara's sand, 

Break like a mirror in her hand. 

The mountain and the moorland are akin, 
Both children of one mother Earth ; 
Diana on the moorland dwells 
And ne'er essays Andean steeps 
Nor treads Tartarean hells ; 
Ne'er drinks the agonies of birth 

117 



JACK KETCH STILL LIVES 



To hear that cry — sweeter than wedding bells ! — 
And at her breast young Lycidas ne'er sleeps ; 
Sweet Echo ne'er awakes her with his din ; 
With Niobe she never weeps. 

I oft have pondered on the sins of wives ; 
First Jealousy, then Empire rules their lives. 



JACK KETCH STILL LIVES 

YES, Men of Ulster, paper armies muster, 
And snort and squeal and bellow out a noise. 
Keep up this pigmy game of brag and bluster, 
Parade great Ulster's streets with wooden toys ! 
Jack Ketch — forget it not ! — still lives. 

Defy the Government with bloody words 
And proclamations, stuffed with froth and wind, 
And tie Rebellion's rag to willow swords ; 
Let Britain's glorious standard trail behind ! 
Jack Ketch — forget it not ! — still lives. 

A standard of a thousand years is ours ; 
Majorities, 'tis, make their will the law. 
'Tis roses, thistles, shamrocks are Love's flowers : 
Have you e'er felt a blow from a lion's paw ? 
Jack Ketch — forget it not ! — still lives. 

118 



AN ASSASSIN 



AN ASSASSIN 

I WAS Patroclus, aye, his dearest friend ; 
He trusted me as brother trusts a brother; 
There were no courtesies fond hearts could lend 
We did not lend to one another. 

He needed me ; he was in sore distress, 
For rebels hounded him from far and near, 
And cutthroats, bandits, too, around him press 
And Murder hisses in his ear. 

I swore I would defend him with my life 
And make Rebellion's scarecrows chew the dust : 
And then I slew him ! Had he been my wife 
I had not dealt a viler thrust. 

Those three and thirty daggers ! Julius' ghost ! 
They stare their bony fingers full at me ! 
Is there a hell ? Then on a spit I roast ; 
^y g° r y hands would stain a sea. 



119 



SPALPEENS 



SPALPEENS 

OUR maids are good of heart and hand, 
But oh, the scalawags our neighbors bring 
Sometimes ! a blot upon the land ; 
Their Bowery manners, how they fling 
At our gray heads ! 

They stain the grass ; the birds won't sing ; 
Our giant oaks like mourners stand : — 
Did Nature make this thing ? 
They ask : whence came this brazen brand ? 

All day they dawdle, waiting for the night, 
Then swarm like locusts on the Nile 
For cards and gossip and a fight 
Kilkennean, bog-trotter style. 



GALLANTRY 

f~E women only knew — but some do know — 
-*- The heart of man, its springs of gallantry, 
It cannot be their hearts would run so slow ; 
Eor wings would shoe their feet so eagerly ! 

120 



GALLANTRY 



'Twas this threw Kaleigh's cloak before his queen; 
It made the noble Essex her true knight ; 
It clad those cavaliers in kingly mien ; 
It gave Plantagenet his lion might ; 

And of man's very being 'tis a part, 
It is its essence ; 'tis his very soul ; 
'Tis half of love, and oft it rules his heart 
And leads its vassal to the bridal goal ; 

It takes the maiden by the manly hand, 
And leads her 'cross the brook upon dry stones ; 
This brings a chair while tired feet will stand ; 
It bears a heavier burden than it owns ; 

And when some great ship founders it will die 
That she — a waif upon life's sea — may live ; 
Oh ! if ye knew the witchery of a sigh, 
The heart that gives because it loves to give ! 

Where Womanhood is sovereign 'tis good-by 
To Gallantry ! another code must then 
Prevail ; good-by to Sympathy's sweet sigh ! 
Love's paradise can be a tiger's den. 



121 



THE DEAD FINANCIER 



THE DEAD FINANCIER 

BIG both in Mind and Field, 
He marshaled cohorts of Big Industries 
Like Alexander's phalanxes; 
Shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield, 
They fought the infantry with frowning front 
Till competition staggered at the brunt. 

His nod was Jove's ; now prices soar like kites ; 
Men say old Nestor has returned to earth, 
For now a giant 'tis that smites, 
A Titan with a Titan's girth. 

But who defies the people long and lives ? 
Did not Marengo's son die in a cage, 
An eagle struck and sating of his rage ? 
Reading the cryptograph that Delphi gives 
He saw his pyramids by lightning hit — 
From dome to basement split ! — 
An angry nation summoned from the sky, 
Folded his tent and laid him down to die. 



122 



STYLE IS HALF THE MAN 



STYLE IS HALF THE MAN 

WE love the classic writers. Why? 
Because they talk so well ; 
And if they walk or run or fly, 
It is their style will tell. 

Pedants to awful Plato kneel, 
Whose tongue is Greek to me, 
And this is why that awe we feel 
Which makes us bend the knee. 

But read him in our native tongue, 
His politics should light our fires, 
? Tis garbage for an office cat; 
But oh, his style ! This is the lyre's ! 
His rhetoric is Age grown young, — 
A god would talk like that. 

In childish days we learn to worship him 
From grown-up children who have learned the 

same, 
And so a perfume hangs about his name, 
A halo round a childish whim. 

123 



MAN'S FAIREST GRACE 



And yet 'tis Greece that plumes our wing, 
Her artist's eye its texture hems ; 
The Rhine, the Rhone, the Volga, Thames, 
All flow from her Castalian spring. 



MAN'S FAIREST GRACE 

A HEART; the fairest grace God gives to 
Man! 
Give him all Bacon's wit, but give no heart, 
Man is a monolith, a Caliban, 
Half monster and half man, a thing apart. 

'Tis Nature's gift, as are our eyes and faces ; 
An ass must bray, for he was born for braying ; 
Man is no fungus growing on the races, 
He comes from eggs long Ages have been laying. 

Hearts marshal to their music troops of friends ; 
They give Love's mystic thread the strength of 

steel ; 
The heart unto the cottar's cabin sunshine lends 
And makes the chateau human longings feel ; 

And when pale Grandeur crawls towards its grave 
It bids the hand of Childhood bring him flowers ; 
It gilds anew the laurels of the brave ; 
It leads pale Poverty through purple bowers. 

124 



THE TE DEUM 



THE TE DEUM 

A THOUSAND years ! Ten centuries 
Help us, O God, their import gauge ! 
Have heard these soul-inspiring cries 
From week to week, and age to age. 

Holy, O holy, holy Lord, 
Hear Thou the martyrs' hymns of praise, 
And see the saints revere the Word ; 
Thy people, Lord, vouchsafe to raise ! 

Have mercy on us, King of Glory! 
The cherubim and seraphs cry. 
And they know well the well-worn story 
That like frankincense wooes the sky. 



EOKTUKE - HUNTEKS 

WHEN creditors grew too importunate 
And forums howled with hungry dervishes, 
The Senate gave patrician buccaneers 
A charter ; by its favor they could loot 

125 



FORTUNE - HUNTERS 



Whole provinces of heirlooms, gilded wealth, 
And send to Rome to fill those greedy maws. 

'Twas when the beardless Caesar squandered lacs 
To feed the mob and teach Rome's slums to sing 
His plaudits, fealties, and Titan lusts ; 
And when the skies rained on the Pontifex 
Black debts and crowds pressed round the Ves- 
tals' doors 
Until their hinges groaned, the Senate sent 
This Alcibiades — her maids' and matrons' 

pride ! — 
He in whose brain surged many a Marius ! — 
Away to Further Gaul and bade him stay 
And dull Ambition's sword upon that horde 
Of savages. 

There were no cities, shrines 
To sack, nor jewels, chalices to filch ; 
And so the prisoners he took he bound, 
Marched home and sold in Roman market-places ; 
'Twas thus those prowling creditors were stilled 
And Rome was sugar-fed like Sybarites. 
'Twas Crassus rifled Asia ; and Verres did 
Sicilians, as Rome's least mortal mind 
Has thundered in the ears of earth's last sons. 

Nor were these first of all Barabbas' kin ; 
Their ancestors were those old demigods, 
The Argonauts, who filched the Golden Fleece 

126 



FORTUNE - HUNTERS 



From where great Caucasus salutes the Morn, 

Young Jason, Hercules, Dioscuri ; — 

Fair Helen's kin, whose frailty sacked old Troy. 

But brigands there have been since Hercules ; 
And still the hungry hunt goes on ! 
That Argonaut who India sought and found 
The Indies and Caribbea's tongueless sea 
Hied Cortez on to Montezuma's halls ; 
'Twas here this greed for pelf piled Aztecs 
In windrows like bearded wheat too early ripe ; 
This glutton-greed, too, oped those Inca mines 
Pizarro sacked with vandalism's hand, 
Where Titicaca blisters in the sun. 

But bandits have been fleecing lambs since then ! 
For did not Britain find those golden sands 
Columbus' telescope had failed to see ? 
Grim harpies ! they have plucked a sovereign 

billion 
From India's pale and famished myrmidons ; 
See Crispin cringe at Hunger's buzzard claw ! 
And Famine creep like cobras on all fours, 
Where Plenty stalked with supercilious airs ! 

She gives them, true ! a line of bayonets 
While filching lacs from fever-famished hordes, 
But Toil goes begging, hat in hand, 
To find an obolus for Charon's fee. 

127 



OUR OLD MASTER 



OUR OLD MASTER 

DEAR Childhood Days! Your ghosts come 
back sometimes 
As sweet siroccos come from scented isles, 
From far Ceylon or from the spicy climes 
Which greet the God of Day with eager smiles ! 

One comes to-day on Memory's fleeting breath, 
A spirit with a saintly mien and face 
Has been long hid behind the mists of Death. 
? Tis he who helped Ambition set its pace 

And helped us neophytes to try our wings 
As mothers teach young linnets how to fly, 
And told us, too, where flow the purest springs 
And when the tempest thunders in the sky. 

Is there, Great God, within yon realm of dreams, 
A paradise where we shall meet again, 
An Eden yonder where the sunset gleams, 
And has it fragrant meads and many a glen ? 

Oh, then, dear Father, let us see our friend ! 
For Learning ne'er a sweeter father knew, 
Nor gentler gard'ner helped a twig to bend 
Nor knew a path where redder roses grew. 

128 



A ROMAN 



A ROMAN 

I AM a Roman ! So a Roman said 
When some one asked him if he knew the way 
Whose feet to Vesta's ancient temple led: 
How Romans roll their R's when Rome they say! 

And why not ! She's imperial ! eternal ! 

Ask Egypt where was Karnac, where was Thebes ; 

And Babylon, where is your pride supernal ? 

And Syracuse ; do not the plowman's glebes 

Cut wrinkles in your face ? Save where that tomb 

Has buried earth's best sons in earth's worst gloom ? 

'Twas when God spoke He gave Rome her great 

crown, 
And gave her, too, her golden sky and field, 
And gave her heights from whence the gods look 

down, 
And gave her seas perpetual harvests yield ; 

And gave to Italy Caucasia's face, 
And such a charm that all the human race 
Come here to tell their beads and from her lip 
Their honey, culture, art and music sip. 

129 



A SELF-MADE QUEEN 



Thou art immortal, Rome ! imperial ! 
The vandals of each clime and every age 
Have spoiled you ; but you are perennial 
And laugh at Death and Time and Ruin's rage. 



A SELF -MADE QUEEJST 

AS aimless as a summer sea 
Till Cupid ope'd the gates of joy, 
As idle as a paper toy 
And useless as a painted tree. 

And in my father's house a waif 
That floated on the tongueless tides ; 
All seas are smooth and harbors safe 
Where Idleness with Pleasure rides. 

But see me now and my young son ! 
Three years have faded into skies ; 
A queen I am whose courtiers run 
Because my prince delights all eyes. 



130 



A PRINCE'S BATH 



A PRINCE'S BATH 

A BABY in his bath, 
A lovely, laughing wight, 
Young Motherhood to christen him, 
And grandpapa 
And grandmamma 
To pacify his wrath 
And praise each lordly whim ; 
Show me a sweeter sight ! 



BELLING THE CAT 

OUR linnet sings the livelong day 
Except when Grizzly comes his way. 
How can a bird — or rat, for that — 
Be safe except we bell our cat ? 



131 



THE KITE -FLYERS 



THE KITE - FLYERS 

HERE all the boys, their fathers, too, 
Are flying kites, their sisters and their 
brothers ; 
The very air is red or blue ! 
Some kites are sailing top-mast high, and others 
Are diving, ducking, swinging, swaying 
Like some corvette with free-wind sailing; 

!NTow, one is tumbling in the race 
As if some sprinter fell upon his face, 
And one is reeling 'round a tree 
As if a priest were on a spree. 

Kites, too, are flying in a London street, 
And of a texture quite as thin ; 
They tumble, too ; some, too, the peeler greet : 
Kite-flying, then's, a sin. 



132 



NUGGETS GROUND TO SAND 



NUGGETS GROUND TO SAND 

I MET some soldiers in the woolly West, 
Big, husky lads, well bronzed by sun and air. — 
But cockatrices in an Eagle's nest ! — 
Were marching, counter-marching, here and there ; 

And when they stretched out 'neath the sun to fry, 
I tried to learn the chemic secret why 
Life's golden nuggets were reduced to dross; 
What fate, what fortune, had constrained this loss ; 

Adventure, some ; some disappointment, said ; 
And one forsook his mother and his home 
Because a maid threw ashes on his head ; 
And some were birds of passage and must roam ; 

And one young Bayard loved so well his land 
He thought, poor fool ! his love was best exprest 
By grinding life's rare nuggets into sand 
Instead of feathering for himself a nest. 



133 



FORGING THUNDERBOLTS 



FORGING THUNDERBOLTS 

THE sun is drawing up the veil from Dawn, 
And we are struggling in Charybdis' throes ; 
Great Aetna's flues are smoking; the brawn 
Of Vulcan raking down his fires ; the woes 

Of Cyclops are beginning their day's toil; 
For Jove, in need of thunderbolts, a score, 
Had sent his herald to Sicilia's shore ; 
And he, emerging from the soot and moil, 

Just now for high Olympus spreads his wings ; 
Ere long the furnaces are spouting flame ! 
Ere long I hear Cyclopean hammers ring! 
For now those smiths the lightning's will would 
tame 

And chain it to the sleeping trident's prong 
To wait beside Jove's throne and punish Wrong. 



134 



BLOOD 



BLOOD 

BLOOD ! Blood ! Ye specters of the Night, 
To think of you degrades the soul ! 
To gloat is Hell's delight, 
Thou chamberlain of Death's Long Roll! 

A butcher came to kill our pig — 
Sweet scavenger of milk and corn ! — 
Hirsute as they, for filth loves filth ; 
Man is a growing twig, 
Improved, degraded some by tilth, 
And craves the slums where he was born. 

Butchers of men — coarse-livered brutes ! — 
Devour what their digestion suits. 



THE CROSS IN THE SKY 

MARCHING on to Rome 
Constantine the True, 
Emperor by right, 
Conqueror by might, 
135 



KATHERINE 



Saw a golden cross 
Hung within the dome, 
Gleaming through the blue ; 

Heard a mighty voice 
Bid him make his choice, 
Scorn the Pagan's frown, 
Scorn the Pagan dross, 
Don the Christian crown ; 

Kneeling, spoke the vow; 
Kneeling, took the veil. 
Soon all kingdoms bow ; 
'Gainst God can naught prevail. 



KATHERINE 

KATHERINE? Yes, Thracian, too, 
A Diomed of mettle true! 
Many a time her white winged feet 
Have made a maze of our village street; 
Many a time for a twenty mile 
This queen of the turf has made me smile ; 
Many a boy and many an eye 
Has tiptoe stood when she flew by — 
And many a head from a window peered 

136 



HENS AND CHICKENS 



And thought from her hurry some Death was 

feared. 
Good-by, fair maid ! And where you dwell, - 
Elysium ever, and never hell ! — 
My Pegasus lives ; and give him a neigh, 
For thoroughbreds ever a welcome say. 



HENS AND CHICKENS 

PRAY, why are you a poet, old and gray, 
Whose hands are hanging to the heels of 
Day; 
With manuscripts a score 
That from your heart you tore ; 
Now breaking sods and brooding hens 
And herding chickens in strange pens ? " 

My secret ? Well, 'tis yours, my friend ! 

I cannot eat my lands, but they can lend 

Me cash to plume my books ; 

For you must know that Mammon looks 

Askance at all the scribbler-trade ; 

Ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-paid 

This Empress of all Arts ! 

These men who bare their hearts 
And beat their throbbing brains 
137 



A RAILROAD KING 



Against Borean gales and winter rains 
Too proud to beg, except it be 
An obolus from Fame ! — 
They little gain except a name 
To hang on some ancestral tree. 

Like sailors and the lunatic, 

They have small craft 

To nurse them when the soul is sick 

Or lucre pluck from Fortune's hands. 

Barabbas ever at the crossroads stands 
To filch the golden fleece 
And wing the brigand's shaft; 
!Nbr are there e'en Tarpean geese 
To warn the warder when he sleeps ; 
And this is why a poet chickens keeps. 



A RAILROAD KING 

THERE have been Czars with lightnings 
less than mine, 
And Czars would stagger with the load I bore ; 
My Empire was the rocks and that thin line 
Of ribbon, dynamite that tore 
138 



MY BABIES 



A speedway for an iron-horse's feet 

Beneath a mighty river's bed, 

And cut a granite street 

From mainland to that island led, 

Is regent of a continent; 

Whose Gemignano towers 

Proclaim the Dawn, 

Defy an earthquake's powers, 

Assert a giant's brawn. 

And 'twas my eagle eye that sent 

The footsteps of a nation 

Through ways that find a nation's station. 



MY BABIES 

MY books are my babies ! 
They're dumb and they're blind, 
!Not gracious like ladies, 
But never unkind ! 

I sing to them often 
And show them my heart ; 
But their hearts never soften, 
ISTor know they the art 
139 



ET PRAETEREA NIHIL 



Of winning my favor 
By sweet, little acts 
Of sympathy's savor ; 
And yet they ne'er tax 

My patience by doing, 
By brewing and saying, 
By courting and wooing, 
And cruelly flaying. 



ET PRAETEREA NIHIL 

FOR he was good and gray, some say, 
And some have called that saw a singer ; 
Frogs sing towards the close of day, 
And wasps can whistle with their stinger. 

But filth is his chief claim to fame ; 
Should Milton hear that joiner's name 
Among the groves of sweet Parnassus, 
You'd hear the welkin groan: God bless us. 



140 



BIRTH 



BIETH 

WE are what we are born. 
For ages ancestors 
Were making us; a thorn 
Is still a thorn. The laws 
Of nature make the ore 
The furnace cannot change; 
'Tis iron still ! The ban 
Within the egg we may not know 
That centuries of yore — 
'Tis wondrous strange 
And but the current's flow ! — 
Have crystallized to Man: 
Yet growth is but development, 
And do whate'er we can, 
We can but give the rose its' scent 
And find the soul Jehovah sent. 



141 




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